Haunted
by iPickleThings
Summary: Alternate universe. Bruce Wayne is considering tearing down the old Wayne family mansion. Before he does so, he authorizes a paranormal investigation to take place over a three day weekend. He allows a family friend, Barbara Gordon, to arrange the investigation. She hires five psychics: Richard Grayson (telepath and remote viewer), Jason Todd (post cognate), Timothy
1. Chapter 1: Orientation

**Author's Note:** I'm writing this story for NaNoWriMo. That means that I hope I will be able to get it to 50k and finished within the month and that I'll only be able to post updates if I'm at my word goal and have the time to edit the chapter before I post it. So, read at your own risk! If the sparse editing, you may want to think about waiting until December when I can take my time editing it.

Also, there will be pairings in this fic, and the rating will most likely go way up by chapter three. The pairings are planned to be Jason Todd / Tim Drake with hints of Bruce Wayne / Selina Kyle and Barbara Gordon / Richard Grayson. If those pairings are counter to your interests, please keep that in mind.

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><p>Barbara looked out over the sparsely filled lecture hall in front of her. It was one of the smaller ones available on the Hudson University campus, but it was still more than enough room for her purposes. Seated in the deep red upholstered chairs were only six people. They were spread out haphazardly in the seats of the gently sloping room.<p>

Seated in the front row was Bruce Wayne, the man that had made possible the reason that they were all gathered together. He was seated slightly to her right, his thickly muscled arms crossed defensively over his chest. He was staring blankly at the white screen that was dropped down behind her, his expression closed off and uninviting.

Seated a few rows behind him was Selina Kyle. Her short black hair styled and feathered and very fashionable. Her shirt was tight and black and showed just enough of her pale skin. She had painted her eyes with thick black eyeliner in the cat eye style and cherry red lipstick pulled into a slight smile as she glanced around the room, obviously inviting anyone to come up and speak to her.

Farther back and to the left was Richard Grayson. He was similarly friendly in expression and body language. He was wearing a thick dark blue sweater, his face loose and relaxed as he alternated between smiling at Barbara and looking around at the other people seated in the auditorium. His hair was a little longer than the picture Barbara had of him sitting in a file folder in her office. It curled around his ears and at the base of his neck, naturally dark and curly.

To the right of Richard was Jason Todd, looking sullen and uninterested. He was slouched low in his seat, his head down and his phone out, bright in the low light of the auditorium. The white streak in his hair stood out stark among his dark hair and pale skin. He was huddled down into a worn and battered leather jacket and was wearing a t-shirt with some kind of logo or print on it, but she couldn't make it out.

Behind him, were the two students that she had enlisted: Timothy Drake and Stephanie Brown. They were sitting side by side in the middle of the auditorium, behind everyone else with their heads bent together. She had occasion to meet and work with the two of them before and was glad to see the two of them there, although she wished they had sat closer. Tim had his dark hair brushed off his forehead and was wearing a dark shirt under a plaid long sleeve shirt. The way she could see his leg jumping, Barbara could tell he was impatient for the orientation to begin.

Stephanie, sitting beside him, made a nice picture in a red and dark blue polka dot blouse, her blond hair tied in pigtails behind her ears. She had a stylus tucked behind her ear and seemed to be setting up notes on her tablet, a habit Barbara knew she often employed.

This was her group. The people she would be taking with her on the one adventure that might make her career. Barbara didn't know whether to be ecstatic or to start crying.

"Thank you, all of you, for coming," Barbara said loudly, her voice carrying through the hall easily, the walls and ceiling of the auditorium built with acoustics in mind.

Among her audience she noticed the shifts of attention. Bruce's eyes focused on her, as did everyone else's. The smile dropped off of Selina's painted lips while a smile came to Dick's. Jason put away his phone and Stephanie put away her tablet.

"If you don't mind, now that everyone is here, I'll get started on the orientation for the paranormal investigation of Wayne Manor," Barbara said. She took a deep breath, her chest expanding as she did so. "Tim, if you could please hit the lights?" Barbara asked.

Barbara turned toward the large white screen behind her as Tim moved to the projector in the middle of the room and turned off the lights before flipping to the first slide, an exterior shot of Wayne Manor as it appeared shortly after being built.

On the screen, a huge jacobethan style building rose in grainy gradations of black and white. Its tall windows stood out against every surface of the building, its exterior a red brown rock and topped with sharp spires before a slate roof. In the picture, the serving staff were lined up in matching suits and dresses of black and white in front of the steps of the manor. Two men in bowler hats and a beautifully dressed woman in white with perfectly coifed hair in front of them.

"Wayne Manor was built from 1852 to 1854 by Allen Wayne and his wife Catherine van Derm," Barbara explained, her eyes still regarding the image behind her. "The building was originally designed by Allen's father, Solomon Wayne. He had moved the Wayne family from Boston to Gotham to take an opening as a judge when Allen was just a boy, but died of heart failure before he could complete plans to build Wayne Manor. When his son, now an architect, married, he brought his father's ideas and designs to life in the form of Wayne Manor."

"But, there were problems," a male voice rang out from the audience.

Barbara turned to scan the crowd and followed the direction of eyes back to Jason Todd. He was staring unflinchingly back at her.

"That's correct," she said slowly. "Even before Wayne Manor was built, it started to wrack up deaths. Three men died during the construction of Wayne Manor. One man choked on a piece of apple. A second man was beheaded by a piece of falling glass." Barbara paused, turning back to the screen and clicking a small button on the remote in her hand to switch the slide. A face appeared on the screen, old and black and white like the one before it. The man in the picture was roughed up, with a bruised cheek and disheveled hair and clothes. He stared back out of his picture with an expression of confusion and disorientation.

"John O'Malley, the man shown here, confessed to police that he beat his foreman to death with a hammer in the middle of his shift over a pay dispute. This confession was corroborated by multiple eyewitnesses. The foreman's name was Earnest Pchulzki. He was the third man to die on the ground which would later become Wayne Manor."

"The fourth," another male voice rang out, this one familiar. Barbara looked down at Bruce, his face impassive as he stared at the blown up image of John O'Malley on the screen. "The first person to die on the ground that would later become Wayne Manor was Joshua Wayne. He was working as a spy for the Union during the Civil War. He was looking at the ground for his brother, Solomon Wayne, when he was attacked by a confederate supporter. He was stabbed and bled out before he could get to help."

The room was silent for a moment in the wake of that statement until Selina leaned forward excitedly, a smile stretching across her face. "Oh. My. God. Are you Bruce Wayne?" she asked, the inflection in her voice implying that she was about two seconds from bouncing into Bruce's lap with a wink and a pur.

"Mr. Wayne has asked to attend this orientation," Bruce quickly explained. "He has been kind enough to allow us unfettered access to his family's home, something that hasn't been allowed for almost two decades. I hope his presence won't be any detriment to this orientation." She hoped that it went unsaid that his presence wasn't an invitation to bother him.

She was pleased to hear a chorus of somber agreement. Selina fell back into her seat with a disappointed pout, but continued to regard the back of Bruce's head with a curious stare.

"As I was saying, Wayne Manor was already building its own history before it was even built. It had four deaths already soaking the grounds it was to stand on. When Allen and Catherine Wayne finally moved in during the summer of 1854, Wayne Manor already had a head start building its legacy," Barbara continued.

She clicked the button and the slide changed to a closer shot of Allen and Catherine Wayne standing on the steps of Wayne Manor. Allen Wayne was a tall thin man with a large mustache which was fashionable during that time. Catherine was dressed in an airy, but ornate white dress. Her hair was curled, coifed and piled on top of her head, topped with a small white hat garnished in tulle. Her hair was a middling gray in the black and white photo, but Barbara knew from paintings she had found of Catherine Van Derm that her hair color was closer to her own, a deep orange red.

"Allen Wayne is credited as one of the men who helped build Gotham into the great city that it is today. He was an architect and many of the historical buildings making up the business district can be attributed to him. After he made a name for himself as an architect, he began work on finishing his father's dream home," Barbara explained, pacing to one end of the stage and back to her podium.

"What you won't be reading about in the same brochures that tout Allen Wayne's architectural contributions to the Gotham skyline is that he suffered from numerous mental disorders during his short lifetime. Historians working with psychologists reading over Catherine's journals, which she kept all her life, have posthumously diagnosed Allen Wayne with anxiety, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. He may also have been suffering from delusions which led him to believe that Wayne Manor was filled with ghosts and evil spirits, some of whom had it out for him. They may have been delusions or they may not have," Barbara said, turning to give a significant look to her audience.

Barbara pressed her button and the slide changed to another picture of Allen and Catherine Wayne, Allen looking a little older and Catherine smiling a little wider. Standing in front of them were two children. A boy in short pants staring somberly at the camera and a little girl with dark hair in pigtails.

"In 1856, Catherine gave birth to their son Kenneth Wayne. In 1859, she gave birth to their daughter, Lucy Wayne. Allen was insistent that both their children be schooled away from the Wayne Manor, but Catherine Wayne absolutely disagreed. Until, in 1870, when Lucy Wayne turned up dead."

Another click, another slide. This one depicted a group of uniformed policemen walking in a line across a large perfectly manicured lawn and all of them looking down at the ground at their feet as they walked. A babbling fountain was in the foreground.

"In April of 1870, Lucy Wayne was playing in the garden with her nursemaid, Molly Hotch. In Molly's written statement to police, she swears that she took her eyes away from Lucy for only two or three minutes to talk to a passing cook. When she turned back, the little girl was gone. The entire grounds were combed by police and the serving staff alike. The maid was questioned by police for days in an interrogation that would be considered unconstitutional by today's standards. Nobody found anything. Until ..."

Click. The image of a little girl in dark pigtails floating face down in the same fountain appearing in the previous slide came up on the screen. Lush water lilies floated around her and the sun glinted off the water. The lecture hall was deathly quiet in the wake of that slide.

"Lucy Wayne was found floating face down in the backyard fountain three days after her disappearance. She was wearing the same clothes that she went missing in. A coroner found water in her lungs and stomach. Her cause of death was determined to be drowning."

Barbara stared up at the image soberly for a long moment. Then, she pressed the button and moved on to the next image. Now, the Wayne family was dressed in a somber black, the remaining three of them staring morosely at a terribly small coffin standing in an array of flower wreaths and arrangements.

"In the aftermath of Lucy's death, Catherine acquiesced to Allen's demands to send Kenneth away. Kenneth was subsequently sent to England to a boarding school. Catherine recounts unbearable sadness in the wake of her daughter's death. She also recounts her husband's steady decline into depression and madness. By September of 1873, Allen Wayne was dead."

The next slide appeared of a very different funeral. This time the coffin was bigger and the attendance was even larger. Mostly men in sharply cut suits, but also women dressed somberly in high necked tight black dresses clutching handkerchiefs in the black gloved hands.

"The official cause of death was 'misadventure', but Catherine's diary makes it very clear that Allen hung himself from the parlor ceiling with a noose he fashioned himself," Barbara said dryly. Smiling stiffly, she turned back to the few people sitting in the chairs facing her. "An auspicious start to an auspicious family."

"Catherine Wayne continued to live in the house until her own mysterious disappearance in 1920. A maid recounts seeing Mrs. Wayne in the main hallway making her way toward the back of the house. She wished her a good morning, but Mrs. Wayne didn't seem to hear her and continued on her way. She was never seen again," Barbara concluded gravely.

A nervous laugh broke through the uncomfortable silence. Barbara followed the sound and made eye contact with a nervous looking Dick Grayson. "You're kidding, right?" he laughed. "This sounds like something out of a campfire ghost story."

"I'm completely serious," Barbara responded with a smile. "Lucy's mysterious death and her mother's even more mysterious disappearance are all publicly available information. Allen Wayne's death is at first unremarkable, until one gains access to Catherine's diary, which I can make available to any of you should you wish to read it."

"I may take you up on that," Bruce rumbled from his place near the front.

Barbara acknowledged him with a stiff nod. She cleared her throat and hit the button to bring up the next slide.

"Kenneth Wayne wouldn't live in the Manor after what happened to his parents and sibling there. But, he did allow his wife, Laura, to use it to host parties and the occasional seance," she explained.

The image on the screen was of a group of people holding hands around a table. In the middle of the table was a stereotypical crystal ball. The woman at the far end of the table from the photographer had her head thrown back and from her mouth seemed to emanate a strange white smoke.

"Wayne Manor soon began to become something of a psychic hotspot. Paranormal researchers the world over made requests to investigate the Manor, but only the most prestigious were given permission. It became something of a legend among the paranormal community for consistently producing paranormal results."

"That must make this investigation something of a dream come true for you, Ms. Gordon," Selina purred, leaning forward over the edge of the seat in front of her.

Barbara struggled to pull her mouth out of a sneer and into a pleasant smile. "Unfortunately, Wayne Manor has been left inactive and uninvestigated for decades," Barbara sighed. "There has been no observable phenomena in Wayne Manor for years upon years."

"Then, why are we going?" Jason asked, exasperation clear in his voice.

"She's hoping we'll wake it up," a quiet voice answered from the back. Everyone shifted in their seats to look back at Tim, small but unflinching. "In the previous paranormal investigations, the conditions for success were to bring along a reputed psychic of some degree. When the house is provided with a psychic it can speak to and drawn energy from, it reacts. The last few investigations didn't render results, even with reputable psychics along. She's hoping if she brings enough of us, one of us will be what it needs."

There was a pause as everyone continued to stare at Tim and he stared impassively back.

"That's exactly right, Tim," Barbara said, drawing the attention back to her. "The five of you consist of five distinctly different kinds of psychics. I'm hoping that if all of you participate in this investigation, Wayne Manor will find what it needs to wake up in one of you."

"That doesn't sound ominous," Stephanie muttered from the fringe of the group.

Barbara pointedly ignored her. "All of you are professionals who have participated in investigations before, so I won't bore you with the run down of different tests and equipment that I will be bringing along. Suffice it to say that we'll be running the gambit with this one. Does anyone have any questions about the investigation specifically?" Barbara asked.

A few hands went up. Dick, Tim and Selina slowly raising their hands. Before Barbara could take any of their questions, a voice rang out from the back of the hall.

"I have a question for Mr. Wayne!" an unfamiliar female voice said. Looking toward the back, over the craning heads of the other participants, Barbara saw a woman in dark wash tight jeans, pale pink blouse, and bottle red hair swishing over her shoulders. Vicki Vale had a notepad and pen in her hands and a press badge swinging from her neck.

"Ms. Vale," Barbara said tightly. "This is a closed meeting. I've told you before on the phone that I won't comment on anything for you."

"Just one question!" Vicki called back, walking briskly up the middle aisle. Everyone turned to look at Vicki with the exception of Bruce, who sat with his eyes closed and a put upon expression on his face. "Mr. Wayne, is it true that you're planning to bulldoze the stately Wayne Manor after this investigation is concluded?"

Bruce slowly stood up and turned to face Vicki, who was standing several rows behind him her pen poised over her notebook as if she honestly believed she would get a statement from Bruce.

"Ms. Vale, I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about," Bruce responded to her evenly, giving her a baleful stare.

"Reliable sources confirm that estimates have been provided as to the cost and time that would be involved to destroy Wayne Manor," Vicki continued, ignoring Bruce's response. "That makes the sudden planning of this investigation very meaningful. Especially when you consider that there hasn't been a paranormal investigation of Wayne Manor since before you were born."

"Ms. Vale," Barbara said sharply, her hands settling on her hips unconsciously. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave. This is obviously harassment."

The only indication that Vicki had heard Barbara at all was the slight twitch of her carefully sculpted eyebrows.

"Mr. Wayne, what do you expect this investigation of Wayne Manor to find? Ghosts? Ghosts of some specific people, maybe?" she asked sharply.

Bruce's thick eyebrows came down over his eyes, his expression shuttering completely. His long legs ate up the distance between himself and Vicki as he strode around the chairs and down the center aisle toward her. "Vicki, please stop while you're ahead," he said quietly. Barbara wouldn't have heard him if not for the pervading silence in the room.

"Maybe the ghosts you're looking for belong to some long dead philanthropists?" Vicki spat, emotion and vitriol clear in her voice. "Maybe your parents?"

"Ms. Vale!" Bruce's voice boomed across the lecture hall, making everyone jump and Vicki freeze with her mouth still open. "That is quite enough," Bruce said. "If I could please speak to you outside," he continued, taking Vicki gently by the elbow, a stark contrast to the obvious anger in his voice.

Bruce walked Vicki to the exit in the back of the hall, everyone silent as they left. The exit doors were loud as they slammed shut behind them.

Barbara could hear as well as see the people remaining in the lecture hall shuffle nervously as they glanced back and forth between the exit Bruce and Vicki had just left through and Barbara, still standing stiffly on the stage. Barbara sighed audibly through the mic and all eyes swiveled toward her.

"I'm sure Mr. Wayne can handle Ms. Vale. Now, your questions?" she asked as pleasantly as she could manage.


	2. Chapter 2: The Bar

Dick held the drinks in his hands above his head as he maneuvered around a group of loudly speaking ladies gathered around the bar. Dick had never been to this bar before, but that wasn't unusual considering that he could count the number of times he had been to Gotham on one hand.

The Burning Bridge Tavern was, apparently, a favorite with the locals. It had looked like a hole in the wall to him, with the plain wood door and neon sign illuminating crumbling brick walls tagged sporadically with graffiti. But, Jason had assured him that it was the best bar around campus and he wasn't disappointed. The bar was pumping loud music out to the many college boys and girls gathered around the bar and clustered around the standing tables. Dick had no idea how they had snagged one of the booths in the back, but they had.

Dodging quickly, Dick was able to spin out of the way of two cackling coeds and duck back into their secluded booth. He slid the two glasses, already coated with condensation, across the scarred tabletop to Tim and Steph.

"Two midori sours!" he said brightly, smiling at the two college kids across from him. "If you don't like them, I will be severely surprised."

Tim and Steph exchanged a doubtful look, before looking back at the drinks Dick had brought for them. The liquid was green and bubbling in the glasses, ice cubes bobbing at the surface.

"Come on, be adventurous," Selina goaded them, elbowing Steph lightly with a wink.

Steph turned to Tim and shrugged. "Bottoms up," she said, before picking up the glass and tipping it up determinedly. Time was decidedly less enthusiastic, taking a cautious sip of his drink.

"It's sour!" the two exclaimed at nearly the same moment and in two completely different tones.

"Well, yeah," Dick laughed. "That's why they're called midori _sour_."

Steph grinned at Dick, who grinned back, obviously pleased with the drink he had got for her. Tim frowned down at his drink before slowly pushing it over to Steph to finish for him.

"So, at the risk of muddying our test results," Dick started, rolling his eyes slightly to indicate how likely he thought that was, "what do you guys know about the 'Stately Wayne Manor'?" Dick asked, complete with air quotes.

"Not much," Tim replied with a shrug. "It's sort of famous in Gotham for being haunted. But, beyond the fact of it being haunted, the stories and claims vary wildly."

"Yeah!" Steph added enthusiastically. "When I was a kid, I always heard that it was haunted by a witch who used to live there before they put up the manor or something."

"I always heard about the lady in white," Jason rumbled from his corner of the booth. "Catherine Wayne. She would wander the halls looking for her daughter, blah, blah, blah." Jason took another deep swallow of his beer and pulled an expression of distaste.

"What about you, Selina?" Dick asked. "You're from Gotham too, right?"

"Oh, sure! I'm a gothamite born and raised," Selina responded, shrugging. "You hear all sorts of things about the Waynes and you hear even more about their castle on the hill. One never knows what's real and what just hearsay."

"C'mon, you have to know something," Steph whined, leaning forward with her eyebrows raised. "You're, like, huge on the whole psychic scene."

Selina leaned back, pouting and obviously unhappy to hear that. Jason smirked over his beer, before making a point to look away.

"Ah, I don't follow ..." Dick said doubtfully, frowning at the strange change that Steph's begging had caused.

"Miss Kyle is controversial in the paranormal community here in Gotham," Tim said diplomatically, averting his eyes from everyone except Dick.

Dick frowned back at Tim, wondering if he should press any further. Before he could make any decision one way or another, Selina leaned over the table toward him, her long deft fingers pointing at him.

"I make too much money," she said, giving Dick a long blink and wrinkling her nose to communicate her feelings about that. "Anyone in our field who makes too much money or gains too much recognition make a lot of enemies quickly. I'm sure you're familiar with the phenomenon."

Dick grimaced sympathetically. He was, indeed, familiar with the kind of strange competition that seemed to sprout up in the paranormal community, especially among psychics. He was about to respond in kind when Jason snorted in derision from his right.

"Not all of us take money from little old grannies to tell them that their cats are happy and like having their bellies rubbed," Jason snarked, a mean smile smeared across his face.

Selina laughed, surprising everyone including Jason. "Darling, you could put me out of business if you had half a mind too," she responded, still laughing.

"Tch," Jason snorted, frowning determinedly down at his beer.

"Why do you say that?" Dick asked, confused.

"Because," Selina said, taking a big gulp of her martini before leaning over the table in a conspiring manner, "Jason is a spirit medium. He can see and talk to the dead. I just play at being one if the situation calls for it."

"Wait, I'm confused," Dick said, frowning and putting his hands up. "Are you not actually psychic? Does, uh," he faltered slightly, glancing at Tim and Steph. "Does Barbara know?"

Selina struggled to control a fit of giggles, "Oh, my gosh! You're precious!" she gasped.

Dick looked helplessly at Jason, but he was busy glaring at his beer like it did something to him personally. Steph was tittering into her glass and Tim stared back at him blankly.

Eventually, Tim seemed to take pity on him. Sighing, Tim explained, "Selina is psychic. She's a pre-cog, so think more crystal balls and fortune telling. She's very reliable. Barbara has tested her thoroughly."

"She has a bad reputation with some people, though," Steph explained further, smiling at Dick. "Because she will do cat readings and seances, which pre-cogs don't have any documented aptitude for."

"Sometimes the tourists just want a little razzle dazzle," Selina smiled, wiggling her fingers in some pretty good jazz hands. "And, I will stand by the cat reading! Cats and I have a special connection," she exclaimed, sounding indignant.

"Okay. So, you're a spirit medium, Jason?" Dick smiled and asked, turning to the other man.

Jason frowned back at Dick, "I'm a post cog," he said shortly.

"He sees dead people," Steph said, holding a hand up to her mouth and speaking sotto voce.

Jason rolled his eyes and Steph giggled, finishing the second midori sour.

"Not the most pleasant of abilities," Selina said sympathetically.

"No, not really," Jason bit out.

"What about you two?" Dick asked, smiling at the two youngest people at their table.

"I'm psychometric," Tim explained. He sighed gently at the round of blank looks he got. "More commonly known as a 'touch know' or psychoscopic. When I touch particular objects, I can sometimes gain knowledge or feelings from them about their owners or something that they were used for or around," he explained.

Jason frowned at the younger man, a small wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows. "But, not for everything?"

"No," Tim responded simply. "The more emotional energy that is put into an object, the more I can get from it. So, it could be something that meant a lot to somebody. A locket or a memento might hold the feelings of the person who held onto that object. An object that was used for and around something very emotional, like a murder or a birth, might hold a lot of energy even though the object itself wasn't very important. And, things that have a lot of tactile energy, like keys and computers and cellphones, gather energy just from the sheer amount of time they spend in someone's hand or being used. You'd be amazed how much I can pick up off of someone's cellphone alone," Tim intoned.

Subconsciously, Dick checked that his cellphone was still in his pocket.

"Are they, like, visions?" Jason asked, his beer forgotten.

"They're more like feelings, although sometimes I get flashes of images. A face or a house. Whatever memory the object brought up for the person holding it. It can be a little unpredictable sometimes," Tim frowned.

"Hum," Jason responded, frowning back himself.

The other three exchanged dubious glances between the two men, before Dick decided to jump in.

"So, Steph! What do you do?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah! I do automatic writing," she explained, miming writing in the air in front of her. "I didn't even know I could do anything like that until this guy," she said smiling and jerking a thumb toward Tim, "talked me into trying it at a party when we were freshmen. It's really crazy! Want to try it?" she asked, reaching into her bag and pulling out her tablet.

"Uh, sure! How does it work?" Dick asked.

"Just try to think something really loud, if that makes any sense. I'll pick up the strongest signal in the air," Steph explained, putting her tablet down on the table and pulling up a notepad app. She poised her stylus over the tablet and smiled at Dick expectantly.

"Okay," Dick responded, closing his eyes. He breathed deep and pictured a milkshake. A chocolate milkshake with whipped cream and a cherry on top. He suppressed a sigh. He really needed to reel in his unearthly appetite. Where was he going to get a chocolate milkshake so late at night?

As Dick closed his eyes and thought about milkshakes, Steph also closed her eyes and began to make a repeated long loop on her tablet. As she did so, the loops began to transform into hearts. Heart, heart, heart, J, A, S ...

With a gasp, Tim snatched the tablet out from under Steph's hands and shoved it into her lap.

"What? What happened?" Steph asked, confused.

"Did it work?" Dick asked, opening his eyes.

Jason's frown was slowly growing into a shit eating grin pointed directly at a beet red Tim.

"Oh, god. Did it ever," Selina laughed, pointing her own cheshire's grin at Tim.

Steph eventually fought the tablet out of Tim's hands and looked at the screen. She barely suppressed a squeal. "Eee! Timmy!" she yelled.

"Everyone, just shut up!" he snapped, his face red to the ears.

"What? Can I see?" Dick asked, confused.

"Absolutely not!" Tim snapped. He then hurriedly shoved the tablet into Steph's hands before jumping up. "I've got to go to the bathroom," he mumbled, before disappearing into the crowd.

"He is going to come back, right?" Dick asked, worried.

"Once he nurses his pride. I'm his ride, anyway. He can't leave without me," Steph responded.

"I think he has the right idea," Selina purred, wiggling toward the end of the booth. Steph stood up to let her out. "Off to the little girl's room! Be right back," Selina tittered, waving at the three remaining people at the table with her fingers.

"What about you, Richard?" Steph asked, smiling at Dick as she tucked her tablet back into her bag.

"Oh, please! Call me Dick," Dick responded, waving his hands in the air. He ignored Jason's snort of laughter from his right. "My ability is a little, uh, unusual, I guess?" he said slowly, scratching at his cheek.

"Come on! I attend Barbara's parapsychology lectures regularly. Just try me!" Steph enthused, planting her elbows on the table and leaning forward.

Dick sighed and gave Stepha a long suffering laugh, before closing his eyes. He let his mind drift. In his mind's eye he saw Barbara Gordon, the young and determined professor that had tracked him down out in California and talked him into traveling across the country to participate in her investigation. She was dressed down now, her long red hair tumbling over her shoulders. She was sitting on an old worn in green couch in a long sleeve shirt and pajama pants with a laptop balanced on her knee. Someone was talking to her from the kitchen and she answered them distractedly.

"He calls her Babs..." Dick said slowly, a smile stretching across his face. "What a cute nickname, don't you think?" he asked, opening his eyes to smile at Jason and Steph.

"Oooookay," Jason said slowly.

"Oh!" Steph slammed her hand on the table, her face lighting up in recognition. "Remote viewing, right?" she asked, pointing a finger at Dick.

"Correct!" Dick exclaimed, impressed despite himself.

"Okay, you guys are weird," Jason groused. "I'm gonna go check on Tim."

"Aw, you're no fun!" Steph whined as Dick got up to let Jason out of the booth.

"That's me. No fun all day every day," Jason harrumphed. He stopped at the end of the table and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Hey, nice meeting you guys if I don't see you again before tomorrow."

Dick felt his eyebrows go up and imagined that Steph was wearing a similar expression. "Yeah, nice to meet you too, Jason," Dick responded automatically.

Jason nodded at the both of them before turning around and disappearing into the crowds.

Surprised, Steph turned to Dick and they shared similar expressions of disbelief. "Well," she said primly. "I guess Tim might not be coming back."

Meanwhile, across the bar, Selina weaved through groups of loud coeds gesturing wildly until she reached the back of the bar and the predictably small hallway that terminated in two swinging doors. In the predictable hallway was a predictable line for the women's bathroom. Sighing, Selina leaned against the the wall and pulled out a small compact mirror which she used to check her reflection.

After a few minutes of standing there, a more reserved looking Tim exited the men's room. He was still looking a little pink on the tips of his ears, but otherwise seemed to have regained his composure. He smiled haltingly at Selina, who grinned at him as he walked past her back toward the table.

It seemed like an age before Selina moved through the line and finally into a stall at the end of the bathroom. The door wouldn't latch properly, so she resorted to holding it shut with her foot while she did her business.

Once she was done, she stumbled out into the bathroom and toward the sinks. She could still hear loud music and louder voices from out in the bar, but the bathroom was eerily quiet. Turning off the water, Selina shook her hands to rid herself of whatever excess water still clung to them and looked around for a towel dispenser or one of those blow dryers mounted on the wall. As she glanced around, she suddenly noticed a flutter of black near the top of a stall.

Looking up, Selina saw a crow perched on top of the farthest stall. Its feathers were black and shiny, catching the light and shining it back in bent shades of blue and purple. Its beak was long and glossy and its eyes seemed to stare back into Selina's as she watched it.

Slowly, one foot in front of the other, Selina started to move toward the bird. It flicked its wings nervously and opened and closed its beak the closer she got. Finally it flew away, startling Selina back with a caw and a jump. Selina nearly tripped over her own feet as she stumbled backward to get out of its way. It flew right over her head and straight for the mirror.

Selina turned sharply, her eyes huge as she expected to see the bird slam headfirst into the glass, breaking its own neck and possibly the mirror. To her surprise, the bird flew right through the mirror as if it wasn't there and into a large wooded area with a familiar fountain.

Breath stuck in her chest, Selina approached the glass. It no longer appeared to be a mirror so much as a window into an overgrown garden at midday. Huge towering oak and maple trees leaned over a cement lanai leading out to a stone fountain headed by a sculpture of a woman in greco-roman robes covering her eyes. It was the same fountain that had featured prominently in the images Barbara Gordon had just been projecting on a screen in the lecture hall they all had just left.

As Selina stepped closer, the image adjusted itself for her position, showing her more of the garden. She looked up and what little she could see of the sky was a pale cloudless blue. She looked down and saw herself lying motionless on the cement lanai.

The Selina in the mirror was dressed in a black tank top and a pair of pajama pants Selina recognized as her own. She was lying on her back, her arms thrown wide to either side of her and her eyes staring blankly upward, unseeing. Around and on top of her body, a murder of crows pecked and picked at her flesh. They bit at her cheek and snapped at the soft skin of her inner arm. They cawed and cackled at one another, ruffled their feathers and lunged back and forth as they fought one another for the right to peck at Selina's dead body.

Tears gathered on the fringe of her eyelashes and with one gargantuan effort, Selina forced air into her starving lungs in a single strangled gasp. And, just like that, the spell was broken. The mirror cleared and only her own shocked expression stared back at her.

Suppressing sobs, Selina rushed from the bathroom and pushed past people blindly as she made her way toward the exit. She crashed out the front door and ran full tilt down the street back toward the college parking lot where she had left her car.

"Hey! Where are you going?" she heard someone yell after her, but she didn't stop, didn't slow down. She just kept running.

"Do you think she's okay?" Tim asked, worry and curiosity filling his voice. Jason walked over to where Tim was poised, halfway down the sidewalk after Selina.

"I don't know. Just let her go for now," Jason said slowly, coming up and laying a heavy hand on Tim's shoulder.

Tim glanced doubtfully from Jason to Selina's rapidly disappearing figure.

"She is a pre-cog. She might have seen something unsavory. You know the both of us can relate," Jason said with a shrug.

Tim frowned up at Jason, looking back down the street to see Selina turn into the parking lot and disappear behind a building.

"You're right," he said quietly.

Jason looked down at Tim with an unreadable expression for a beat before marshalling his expression into a cocky grin. "Of course I'm right," he replied with a bark of a laugh, shaking Tim out of his thoughts. "As I was saying, I vote for your place. Mine is a fucking mess. I can't imagine anything you have to live within a 100 foot radius is anything less than sparkling clean, so it's yours or a hotel, princess."


	3. Chapter 3: The Night Before

Bruce was dragging when he finally returned home to the penthouse that night. It had been a long day at Wayne Enterprises with him constantly moving in and out of R&D meetings. He had hoped the orientation that night would be quiet and uneventful, but was proven disastrously wrong. Not that Bruce minded. He was glad that he was there to deal with Vicki. He hated that she had found out about the investigation at all and if he ever found out who had told her, he would be hard pressed to stop himself from wringing that person's neck.

He slowly heaved himself out of the elevator and directly into the penthouse, pausing by the entrance. Sitting by the silver elevator doors was a familiar bookbag and a duffle bag that he didn't recognize. Bruce frowned down at the two bags heaped by the door.

"Master Bruce," Alfred greeted him as he came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a plain white apron he had tied around his waist. "You're late," he stated simply, the two words both a reproach and a question.

"There was a small problem at the orientation," Bruce responded shortly. "Is that Damian's bookbag?" Bruce asked, still frowning down at the bags by the door.

Alfred's eyebrows went up as his heavy eyelids went down, a world weary sigh slipping out of him. "And his duffle bag," Alfred answered. "He has been packed and ready to leave since he got home from school today."

"I just don't understand his sudden interest in the investigation. I wish I never would have mentioned it in front of him," Bruce lamented, tearing his eyes away from the bags sitting at the door and moving past Alfred into the kitchen. The old butler followed Bruce before detouring toward the oven. Opening the door, he pulled Bruce's covered plate out and placed it down in front of him with a glass of water.

"He's young yet, Master Bruce," Alfred commented gently. "He's likely to go through phases just like any other boy."

Bruce picked up his fork and began to poke at the meal in front of him dejectedly. "But, ghosts?" he muttered.

"I seem to remember that you had a similar interest when you were young," Alfred sniffed.

"That was different," Bruce replied flatly, spearing a piece of potato on the end of his fork and popping it into his mouth.

"Was it?" Alfred asked innocently.

Bruce frowned down at his plate. He supposed it really wasn't that different. His motivation as a boy was a bit more morbid, but Damian had his own morbid streak that neither of them acknowledged. This might Damian's own way of indulging it.

"Is Damian still awake?" Bruce asked around mouthfuls of Alfred's carefully cooked meal, quickly trying to shovel the rest of the food on his plate into his mouth.

Alfred frowned down at Bruce. "He was in his room on his computer, the last I saw him. Sir, if you're not going to taste my meals, let me know and I won't put quite so much effort into flavoring them."

"I did taste it," Bruce grumbled, wiping his mouth on the corner of his napkin after he polished off the rest of his plate. "It was delicious, as always. Thanks, Alf," Bruce threw over his shoulder before ducking out of the dining room and into the hall.

The older man sighed heavily, but a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Boys will be boys, I suppose," he sighed as he gathered up his master's empty plate and cut and carried them over to the sink.

Bruce moved down the silent hallway toward the door that belonged to Damian's room. From beyond the soundly shut door, Bruce could hear the quiet tapping of fingers on a keyboard. Bruce rapped his knuckles on the door and the tapping stopped.

"Damian?" he called. "May I come in?"

There was a shuffling on the other side of the door and the distinct sound of heavy items being shifted and then the door was opening to reveal a petulant face staring up at him.

Bruce often found himself thinking that Damian's appearance was somewhat unfortunate. The boy was all whipcord muscle strung under dusky brown skin. He was somewhat short for his age, but made up for his size with a loud voice and an obstinate approach to everything. He sometimes wondered if Damian might be able to present a nicer demeanour if he ever ventured to use an expression other than a scowl at all times. Damian had a short pushed up nose, thin lips and thick dark brows over large dark blue eyes. On the surface, his face looked much like Bruce's own when he was that age, but the similarity was lost when the scowl that was eternally etched into Damian's face was taken into account.

"Father?" Damian responded, suspicion thick in his voice.

"I saw your bags by the door. I was hoping to talk to you one more time about accompanying the investigation," Bruce explained. He found that being straightforward and as detached as possible seemed to work best with Damian.

"Tt," Damian clicked his tongue, a strange verbal tick he had exhibited since a child. "I don't know why we have to keep going over this. No, allow me to correct myself. I don't understand why you are so opposed to me accompanying them."

"May I come in?" Bruce asked diplomatically, not wanting to get into an argument in the hall where Alfred could hear them.

Damian squinted up at his father, suspicion still painted in broad strokes over his face, before he relented and stepped back to let Bruce inside.

Damian's room was orderly, as usual. The walls were filled with bookshelves. The bookshelves were filled with hard backed classics in various languages arranged in alphabetical order on the shelves. His bed was made and his laptop was turned on at his desk, the only light illuminating the room. But, it was locked, a blinking cursor waiting for a password.

"May I?" Bruce asked, gesturing at Damian's bed.

Damian shrugged, closing his eyes briefly and twisting his mouth to show his indifference.

Bruce sat.

"Damian, I wish you would level with me about why you really want to go to the Manor," Bruce said, exasperation weighing down his words.

Damian's posture stiffened visibly, though he was obviously trying not to give away any tells. "Parapsychology is a fascinating field of study just finding its own feet among the other reputed sciences," Damian rattled off in defense.

"Damian," Bruce snapped sharply, his own scowl mirroring his son's.

Damian harrumphed and tapped his foot nervously, his hands flexing in and out of fists at his sides. "You never let anyone go there!" he eventually blurted out.

"It's an old dusty house full of bad memories. There's no reason for anyone to go there," Bruce recited.

Damian clicked his tongue again. "Until now?" he shot back.

Bruce closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He couldn't afford to yell at his son. Not only were the walls thin and the sound would carry. He was also far too exhausted to wade into an all out argument with Damian that night. Arguing with Damian was more of a physical test than many of the exercises he put himself through every day. And, Bruce put himself through rigorous excercises every day.

"Yes. Until now," Bruce replied.

Damian seemed to waver, unsure how to attack next.

"Then, obviously, I'd like to take this opportunity to finally see it, our stately family home, before it is gone forever," Damian replied, crossing his his arms over his chest. He glared down at Bruce, as if daring him to imply he could be insincere in this desire.

Bruce sighed heavily. "I'll just lodge my complaint now, that I think this a bad idea," he said, rubbing a rough hand over his face.

"I can't say I understand your reluctance to let me go, but rest assured that your concerns have been heard and considered," Damian replied primly, actually literally tilting his nose into the air a little more as he said it.

Bruce sighed again as he looked at his son. Talia had always told him that Damian was a prince. He had always considered it as a turn of phrase, a sign of affection for her only child. Obviously, judging by Damian's constant attitude, while Damian was in her custody it was much more than a turn of phrase.

"Thank you for your time, all the same," Bruce said stiffly, standing up slowly and moving toward the door. He hated talking to Damian the same way he did his board of directors. It grated against every nerve he had, but he knew the boy just reacted better to it.

"You're welcome," Damian replied, moving back toward his desk and taking a seat there. Bruce tried to control his temper even as Damian very obviously waited for Bruce to leave the room before putting in his password.

Bruce leaned against the door after he shut it behind him. He resisted the urge to bang his head back against the wood. Damian would definitely hear that.

"The young master could not be persuaded?" Alfred asked, silhouetted by the light from the kitchen as he stood in the doorway.

Bruce gave the butler a tired look.

"I can't say that I'm surprised," Alfred replied sympathetically. "Think of it this way, Master Bruce. At least you'll have a weekend to yourself for a change."

Bruce glanced up at the ceiling in supplication. "Yeah," he rumbled. "At least there's that."

* * *

><p>Jason flopped down onto the mattress beside Tim. The both of them were breathing heavily, their chests heaving in time with one another, their skin sticky with sweat, spit and other body fluids. And, let's not forget, that the two of them were nude and flushed a pretty pink.<p>

"Wow," Jason breathed, staring up at Tim's ceiling and running a hand through his hair. There was a poster of a detailed diagram of a low fidelity camera taped to his ceiling among glow in the dark stars and a few smaller posters of the periodic table and other informative things that Jason either didn't recognize or didn't bother to focus on.

"Yeah," Tim gasped between breaths, his eyes closed and his head tilted back.

"Do you, like," Jason flapped his hand in the air, but stopped quickly. It was too much effort. "Work out or something?" he finished lamely.

Tim turned toward Jason, opening his eyes and frowning at the other man. Jason raised his eyebrows.

"Oh!" Tim exclaimed, his eyebrows shooting up in realization. "Right! No. I mean, yes. Yeah, I work out. But, the, uh, flexibility is from the yoga classes that Steph drags me to every morning."

Jason's mouth quirked up in one corner as he watched Tim get more flustered as he tried to explain himself. It was cute to watch. "You guys are pretty close, huh?" he asked.

"We used to date in high school," Tim hesitantly elaborated. "It didn't work out, but we stayed friends after."

"Really?" Jason said, surprised. "I had thought you were... Well, you know," he finished awkwardly, grimacing at his own faux paux.

"I am!" Tim replied quickly. "That was sort of, ah, the problem," he explained, blushing.

Tim looked away, embarrassed. Jason had trouble averting his eyes.

In the illumination from the streetlights through Tim's blinds and the glow from the plastic stars on his ceiling, he looked very attractive. All of the hard lines of his face and anatomy were smudged into a soft shape. Jason started to catalogue him. His eyes were a shockingly pale color of blue. His skin was pale, but not as pale as Jason's. He could see hints of a tan line over Tim's hips were he had obviously gotten a little sun over the summer. He was very thin, but also moderately muscled, a few moles dotting his shoulders and forearms.

"I'm, uh," Tim stuttered, "I'm going to go get something to drink. Do you want anything?" Tim asked, sitting up and not quite looking Jason in the face.

Jason sat up quickly, his head swimming a little at the sudden rush of blood to his head. "I'll go," he offered quickly.

"Are you sure?" Tim asked doubtfully, but he was already lying back down in the bed.

"Sure I'm sure," Jason responded. "I saw the kitchen on my way in. What do you want?" he asked.

"I have a shake in the fridge," Tim responded slowly, his eyelids fluttering a little as he fought off another wave of exhaustion.

"Got it! Be right back," Jason said. Before he left, he leaned forward and hovered over Tim for a moment, his eyes checking Tim's for any sign of reproach, before he let himself dip forward and press his lips to the other man's for a brief moment.

Tim's eyes slid shut and a small sigh escaped him as Jason sat back up. He left the room quietly and was thumping down the stairs by the time Tim opened his eyes again.

Jason walked down the stairs naked into Tim's kitchen. It was Jason's understanding that Tim shared the apartment with three other students, one being Steph and the other two being a pair of siblings that both had plans for that Friday night. So, there wasn't much danger of being mistaken for a sexual deviant breaking into their apartment.

Jason found their kitchen snuggled into the back of the house without any issue. He moved to the fridge and pulled it open. He saw Tim's aforementioned shake pushed toward the back. He pulled it out and stared at the label. It was a health shake, the liquid inside green and thick. The label touted its high level of iron and vitamins. Jason pulled a face.

So, maybe Tim was a bit of a health nut. That wasn't a bad thing.

He sat the shake on the counter beside the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water for himself. Closing the fridge door, Jason cracked the seal on the plastic bottle and tipped it up into his mouth. Turning around, his eyes quickly took note of two figures standing in Tim's kitchen, their forms silhouetted by the streetlights out back.

Steeling himself, Jason sat the water bottle down beside Tim's shake and stared at them, his expression challenging.

One of the figures was tall, thin and willowy. He couldn't quite make out colors, but he thought its hair was dark and that it was wearing some kind of oversexed satin dress with a high cut up the thigh and a low off the shoulder neckline. It was wearing heels and dripping dirty water steadily onto the tile floor. The figure beside the tall apparition was much smaller, the size of a small child. This one obviously used to be a little girl, judging by her short dress and little black and white saddle shoes. Her hair was tied into pigtails. She held the other figure's hand in her own and what looked like a soggy teddy bear in the other.

"What's this supposed to be? The welcome wagon?" Jason snorted, sneering at the two unmoving figures standing a few feet away from him. The sound of water dripping off of their bodies and into the steadily growing puddle on Tim's floor was the loudest sound in the room.

"No, no, don't tell me!" Jason exclaimed, waving his hands in mock surrender. "Let me guess! You're here to deliver a warning," Jason said flatly, giving the two of them an unimpressed look.

"Listen, ladies," Jason said, sighing and picking up his water bottle. He took a swig of the water and continued to stare the apparitions down. "I suggest you save your warnings for someone who isn't fucking broke."

Outside, the sound of rain started and then quickly got louder. Jason frowned and looked toward the nearest window. Outside, the night was quiet. He couldn't see any hint of rain.

When Jason turned back to regard his two uninvited guests, they were significantly closer to him than they were before. Now, a scant foot separated him from the other two. And with the new proximity came a gained clarity.

The woman and child's face were horribly disfigured. Their skin was wrinkled and warped like swollen paper left out in the rain. Their skin was white as parchment too, except around their lips and the deep sunken in holes where white unseeing eyes regarded him. There, the skin went from blue to purple to black. They were both soaked, their eyes fixed on on him despite their milky white gaze.

Jason held completely still, his breath freezing in his chest. The woman's breath rattled across his face. It smelled faintly of vanilla.

"It's an invitation," she breathed, her voice somehow beautiful and seductive where it emanated from her mangled lips.

And, just like that, they were gone.

The sound of rain ceased, the figures disappeared as if Jason had blinked his eyes and they took their puddle with them.

Jason leaned heavily against the cold surface of the fridge and took a ragged breath, allowing his eyes to close and his head to fall backward with a thump.

"So much for it being inactive," Jason muttered to himself.


	4. Chapter 4: Vicki

Vicki drove recklessly through the early morning traffic of Gotham city. Despite it being Saturday and the sky only starting to tinge with dawn, the streets were still clogged with cars and busses, the thoroughfares sluggish and the sidewalks dotted with pedestrians walking here and there with their heads tilted down.

The fuming red head cut dangerously around other cars and laid on her horn until she could get around others. She made record time getting across uptown and then across the bridge out of Gotham and toward the coast. As she sped across the coastal highway northward toward Wayne Manor, her conversation with Bruce last night replayed in her head.

"_Vicki, you can't keep doing this," Bruce hissed after hauling her bodily out of the lecture hall._

_Vicki yanked her arm out of Bruce's large calloused hand and gave him the kind of glare that made smaller men flinch. She yanked her blouse back into place and brushed her hair over her shoulder before replying._

"_I can't imagine what you mean, Mr. Wayne," she replied, dripping with a false innocence. "I can't report on the intentions and investments of one of the most powerful men in Gotham?" she asked, her voice thick with sarcastic surprise._

_Bruce looked back at her blankly, his expression carefully controlled. But, she could see the roiling emotions behind his eyes._

"_Vicki, this is my private life. This is something I'm doing for my own closure. Don't you think it's in poor taste to invade that?" Bruce shot back, his voice rising slightly at the end, betraying his own emotion._

_Vicki scoffed to hide the slight twist in her stomach that those words brought. This time last year, she wouldn't have so much as glanced sideways at a story like this. But, this wasn't last year and she couldn't afford to be as discerning as she had been then._

"_This investigation is going to be the deciding point as to whether or not the stately Wayne Manor, one of Gotham's oldest standing structures, remains standing. That is, if the gossip I hear is to be believed. I think it is most definitely in the public's interest to know what goes on here," Vicki returned, sniffing primly._

_Bruce's expression contorted in rage for a moment before he forced himself back under his own rigid control. "Vicki," he snapped, his hand slashing across the air, "Quite frankly, this is none of your or anyone else's business. Wayne Manor is my family home. This is the investigation that I'm funding personally, not a cent of company money has been used here. Wayne Manor isn't even in the city of Gotham. You're just desperate for a story!"_

_Vicki squawked in indignance, but Bruce held up a hand for silence._

"_I understand that desperation, but I hope you don't think that what we shared between us in the past affords you any kind of liberties when it comes to me," Bruce gritted out._

_Vicki stared at him, her eyebrows raised in shock even as his were lowered over blue eyes glittering with determination._

_Before she was aware of what she was doing, her hand swung out hard at his face, the slap loud and resounding in the otherwise silent hallway._

_The two of them continued to stand staring at each other, Vicki's chest heaving with gasps of breath, her hand still in the air, her eyes wide and frenzied. Bruce stood much the same as before, his hands in fists by his side and a distinct red mark growing on his cheek._

_Without another word, Vicki turned on her heel and ran down the hall to the exit._

Vicki clenched her teeth as the emotional bile of shame and defeat hit the back of her throat. Backing down from Bruce had been the last thing she had ever wanted to do, but the man had perfected the art of cutting a person to the bone with a single well placed insult. Vicki still felt like her guts were pooled around her feet, the shame and depression that the truth of Bruce's words had revealed a heavy pall over her mind.

Her heart was still thudding heavily in her chest, her face hot with shame as she pulled up to the front gates of Wayne Manor.

Last night, while driving home through tears of frustration, Vicki had made the decision to crash Bruce's little psychic investigation. The Wayne family was highly respected in Gotham. It was one thing to whisper insinuations that the current Wayne family head believed in ghosts and paid exorbitant fees for swindler psychics to traipse around the family homestead and tell him that his mommy and daddy were still watching over him. It was quite another to run an article with photographic proof to back up that claim.

She pulled a heavy red pair of bolt cutters from her passenger seat as she stepped out of her little smart car. She had picked them up at a hardware store before leaving that morning and was glad to have them as she approached the gates. They appeared the be wrapped in chains.

As she marched forward, however, the gate and chains began to rattle. Vicki paused, her heart stuttering in her chest, worrying that someone might have seen her. That possibly Bruce or Barbara might have foreseen her meddling and were coming to greet her now. Vicki stared wide eyed as the gates slowly pulled themselves open, the chains rattling as they were pulled loose, dropping to the leaf strewn driveway once the gates were open.

Vicki cautiously returned the bolt cutters to her car, considering the open gates. The gates must have been automatic. Maybe they were more modern than they looked and would open for any car that drove up. Obviously, the chains were just for show. She thought that was a little careless, but maybe the Manor got more traffic than she thought and the convenience out weighed the risk.

Still a little doubtful, Vicki crawled back into her car and drove through the gates still standing patiently open. The gravel churned and the chains rattled as she drove over them.

As she drove forward, the house rose regally out of the overgrown vegetation all around it. The stone it was built out of was a pale gray, the windows dark, but reflecting back pale pinks and purples as the sun slowly rose in the east behind it. Huge weeping willows, twisting corkscrew, and ancient oak trees reached long spindly fingers toward the house's windows and out over the old rutted gravel driveway. Vicki pulled her car under a particularly bent willow tree, the long weeping branches swinging shut behind her car so as to completely obstruct it from the view of anyone driving by.

She approached the house on foot from there. The gravel crunched under her sneakers. Leaves rustled slightly in the brisk early morning fall air. She passed a beautifully carved fountain standing in the middle of the round drive way. It was still now, green algae marking the places on the face of frolicking cherubic children where water used to flow and spit. The only water now was gathered in the base of the fountain, still and covered with a thick blanket of lilies and algae. As Vicki watched, a small green frogged climbed on top of one of the lily pads and cocked a particularly cognizant eye in her direction.

It coughed out a deep croak and Vicki quickly hurried on.

The steps of the Manor were undiminished by time. They were made of a pale warm beige cement, carefully crafted curling black rails edging the sides until they reached the stone wall exterior. Moss and algae had begun to grow in the shadowed crevasses of the stairs, nature slowly encroaching on the monuments that man had built with his own two hands. But, the steps were still sturdy looking and Vicki climbed them with confidence.

The doors were huge wood monstrosities. They had large black iron lion heads with rings in their mouths as knockers and carved black iron handles with a button on the top for a latch. Vicki tried the doors, pushing and pulling, but they didn't so much as rattle in their casings. She gave them a solid kick for her trouble.

"So much for the front door," she sighed, running a hand through her thick red hair and staring unhappily at the unmoving double doors.

Vicki jogged down the front steps and then a little farther, before whirling around and checking the rest of the front of the house for any windows or doors that she might be able to reach. She didn't see any.

"Back door it is," Vicki muttered, taking toward the right of the building, intending to walk along the edge of the house until she saw a point of entry.

This soon turned out to be completely inadvisable. Tall hedges that had probably been closely cut and carefully manicured in the past now grew like large green sentries all along the exterior walls, preventing sight as well as entry. Vicki was forced to swing further into the wild gardens and forest surrounding the manor, long lacking maintenance let alone a simple pair of pruning shears.

Here and there she would find a path of stepping stones, a crumbling garden bench or what might have been a beautiful fish pond at one time. Thorny bushes, huge twisting tree trunks and long reaching vines had taken over much of the ground and rendered all paths and order nearly unrecognizable among the chaotic clash of nature.

Vicki was stepping cautiously over what might have been a small tumbled bridge when she heard the distinct snap of a twig somewhere behind her.

Vicki's head swung around and her eyes surveyed the greenery around her. The leaves and branches she could see were still and unmoving. Still, she called out, "Hello!"

There was a long pause. The only sound she could hear was the rustling of leaves high above her. All else was silence.

Her face pulled into a grimace, Vicki soldiered on even though the feeling of a cold finger running down her spine dogged her. '_It was just an animal,'_ she told herself, though she moved faster and checked the location of the manor on her left more often. The windows were still high up on the wall. She didn't see any doors through the dense foliage.

"Vicki," someone whispered.

The young journalist turned around quickly, almost stumbling over a protruding tree root in the process of trying to turn around as quickly as possible. Once again, nothing seemed to be moving in the greenery all around her. There were no further sounds, no movement among the trees or underbush.

But, that didn't detract from the fact that Vicki was sure she had just heard someone whispering her name. She couldn't have determined the gender or age of the voice, but the memory of it was clear in her mind.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and tears began to gather on her long lashes as she cast around for any kind of reasonable explanation. Maybe Bruce and his psychic friends were playing a trick on her? But, she hadn't seen any cars and the chains had been wrapped around the gates when she had come in. Although, she supposed they too could have hidden their cars and replaced the chains after coming in. Or, she could be going mad, the sharp decline in her career and her stinging pride hurrying along the process.

Or, there could really be ghosts at Wayne Manor.

Strangling off a cry of fear before it could struggle out of her throat, Vicki turned and started running, crashing through the foliage all around her. She was running full tilt, as fast as the could through the overgrown yard toward the back of the house. Behind her, she felt almost sure she could hear the sound of someone following her, their footfalls covered up by the all the noise she herself was making.

She rounded the corner of the building and could see a paned glass enclosure rise above the riot of greenery, its panes of glass opaque in the pale light of the rising sun. She ran toward it, sure she could hear her own name whispering in the sound of crushed leaves and broken twigs.

There was a wrought iron door made of the same thick opaque glass as the rest of the addition to the Manor set into the northern side of the house. Vicki literally threw herself at it, the door opening in easily at her weight. The young woman fell to the cracked cement floor with a quiet 'Oomph!'

In the aftermath, only the sound of her heavy breathing and her soft whine of pain filled the damp morning air.

Slowly, Vicki pushed herself up onto her elbows and then hands and twisted to look behind her out into the overgrown grounds of the estate. Pinkish dawn light illuminated the tall grass and twisted old trees. Dew shined where the light caught it. Vicki's trail of destruction was clearly visible through the tall grass from the woods at the side of the house all the way to the door of the greenhouse.

Sniffing and feeling wretchedly stupid, Vicki pushed herself into a sitting position and rubbed her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her shirt. Her body was jittery with adrenaline, her heart beat still rabbit fast in her chest, but she was starting to think that she was letting all this talk of ghosts get the better of her.

Vicki stood on shaky knees and turned around again to look at the greenhouse she now found herself in. Unlike outside, everything inside the greenhouse was brown and dead. The leaves of plants, brown and withered, lay on the cracked and neglected cement floor. The skeletal forms of flowering trees reached up toward the sunlight. Dead papery weak ivy clung to the walls and the frames of the glass panes.

Faintly, Vicki heard a far away humming sound. Following it, she walked deeper into the greenhouse, the light somehow thick and viscous after struggling through the opaque glass that made up its walls. She walked slowly, her head swiveling from side to side, and finally sound the source of the buzzing tucked into the far corner of the greenhouse.

There, hanging from a twisted and dead tree, was a huge fat bee's nest. The bees flew in circles around it and crawled sluggishly on every nearby surface. The milled around on the outside of it, occasionally flying in and out of the exit built into its bottom. They hummed and buzzed all around their nest, their bodies round and bulbous to match their hive.

Vicki frowned at the bee's nest. She didn't understand how they could possibly survive inside the greenhouse, where everything else was dead. What did they eat? How did they build their nest?

Unnerved, Vicki backed slowly away from the bees and their insistent buzzing.

She moved quickly in the opposite direction, away from the bees and toward where the greenhouse connected to the rest of the house. Since the door to the greenhouse was open, she hoped that she might have found the entrance that most people used. Maybe all the constant in and out traffic was what let the bees in in the first place? Vicki desperately hoped so.

As she suspected, there was a small plain door with a window set into the stone side of the house, exiting into the greenhouse. Vicki heaved a sigh of relief as she reached it, hoping that her ordeals outside would stop once she got inside and found a good hiding place to wait out Bruce and his psychics.

She stepped up the one step to the door and tried the knob. It jiggled in the door, but otherwise didn't turn to allow her in. Growling in frustration, Vicki took the knob in both hands and turned and shook the knob violently. The whole door shook, loud convulsions against the doorframe. But, it stood its ground and wouldn't allow Vicki inside.

Whining in the back of her throat and glad that no one was around to hear it, Vicki let her forehead fall forward against the glass fo the door. She needed to get inside and going back into the yard went against every fiber of her being.

Sighing, Vicki tried to muster her courage. She had to go back outside. There had to be another entrance somewhere, a back door or a cellar door or an open window or something.

She was just about to force herself to turn around and march herself back outside, when she heard the voice again. It was quiet, just a whisper against the shell of her ear. Her hair tickled her face as hot breath brushed against her skin.

"Vicki," it said, the words formed like a caress.

Gasping, Vicki turned around quickly and looked around. But, just like before, the greenhouse was empty of anyone else but her. She could hear the faint buzzing of the bees from far away and the rustling of leaves brushing against one another outside. There was every indication that she was alone with herself.

Vicki's gasping breaths began to form together into wracking sobs. Wetness gathered on her thick eyelashes and spilled onto her cheeks as she continued to look for and not find the source of the voice.

"What is going on here," she warbled. "Who's there!" she yelled desperately into empty and unresponsive greenhouse full of dead plants.

She expected to hear nothing, only her own echoing sobs coming back to her. Except that there was a response. A faint wheezing laugh. And, it came from right above her.

Eyes wide, tears streaming down her cheeks, her lower lip trembling, Vicki slowly tilted her head up.

And screamed.


	5. Chapter 5: The Beginning

Barbara leaned around Damian as she trundled another armload of equipment up the steps and into the Manor. This was her third trip and the surly pre-teen hadn't so much as flicked an eye in her direction since she started. She hoped that she wasn't ever so rude when she was his age, but maybe she was. She did remember that she had been quite a handful for a few years there.

The young professor had decided to set up her base in the parlor. She had pulled a few old long tables together along the edge of the room and carefully covered them with a thick tablecloth to protect them from scratches. She had stacked on top of them boxes of equipment: thermometers, people counters, proximity meters, various EVP recorders, full spectrum cameras, motion detectors, EMF meters, light grids, the list went on and on. If it was ever used to prove the existence of the supernatural, Barbara had taken it.

It was about mid-morning and she had her van nearly unloaded, no thanks to Damian. Bruce had dropped his son off that morning, looking equal parts apprehensive and apologetic as Damian marched past the both of them after a brief greeting and straight into the house. So far as she knew, Damian had dropped his stuff off in a bedroom he had already staked out as his own. Afterward, he had planted himself on the front steps, pushed a pair of earbuds into his ears, and started to scratch at a sketchbook while pointedly ignoring Barbara and everything else around him.

Barbara sighed as she came out the front door for the last time. She checked her watch, noting that it was just about time for her touted psychics to begin arriving.

As if she had summoned them herself, a car pulled up to the gate and rumbled down the rutted gravel driveway. It pulled up around the front and the driver rolled the window down before throwing a winning smile at her. Barbara found herself smiling warmly back despite herself.

"Hey, good morning!" Dick Grayson called, leaning out the window. "Should I park anywhere in particular?"

Barbara shrugged and noticed that Damian's head had come up to regard the first arrival. "Park wherever, I guess. You're the first one here, so just leave room for the others if you can."

"Will do," Dick replied, tipping a two fingered salute in her direction before pulling his car around the driveway until it was closer to the gate, but not yet in front of it. Barbara watched his tan sedan roll by and decided that it must be a rental. Firstly, it didn't seem to match Dick's personality. Secondly, the stickers taped to the back seat passenger window was a dead giveaway.

Dick was just stepping out of his car when another car rolled through the gates. This car was markedly smaller and rattier than Dick's. It was dark blue, small, a two door, with chipped paint and a corny pink sunset license plate affixed to the front. As it pulled past her to park behind Dick's car, she noted that there were a handful of fading and torn bumper stickers stuck to the rear end of the car. She was unsurprised when Steph stepped out of the driver's side door followed closely by Tim in the passenger seat.

Steph waved at Barbara who smiled and waved back before bounding over to the steps. Tim and Dick followed at a more sedate pace, the two chatting with one another as they approached.

"Are we the first ones here?" Steph asked, coming to a halt in front of Barbara and obviously trying and failing to curb her energy.

"Dick beat you, but only by a hair," Barbara replied, smiling at the other girl's enthusiasm.

"Darn," she enthused, snapping her fingers. "I knew I should have passed him on the bridge. He drives like a grandpa."

"Hey," Dick laughed. "Gotta be careful with the rental, you know?"

"Psh!" Steph laughed, "It's your own fault for not getting the extra protection plan. Hey, who's this?" Steph asked, smiling down at Damian who was watching the three newcomers closely.

Barbara cleared her throat and tried to keep the pained look off her face. "Everyone, this is Damian Wayne. He's going to be staying the weekend with us. Damian, this is Richard Grayson, Stephanie Brown, and Timothy Drake."

"Yes, I'm aware," Damian sniffed, continuing to stare unblinkingly at the other three.

"Of course you are," Barbara sighed. "You can ignore him, he's just here to observe. As a learning experience," Barbara added haltingly.

"Okay..." Steph said slowly, looking down at Damian as if he were a strange and threatening looking dog that she was debating whether to pet or not. "Anyway, we would have been here earlier, but _somebody_," Steph emphasized, waggling her eyebrows and grinning widely, "had a _rough night_, if you catch my drift. Isn't that right, Timmy?" she teased, leaning forward and pulling his high necked t-shirt down to momentarily reveal a dark bruise on his otherwise light skin.

"Steph!" Tim squawked, jumping away from her and pulling his collar back up. "Not cool," he growled.

The other girl didn't take any notice, hiding her giggles behind neon green fingernails. Dick grinned wolfishly at Tim, who was looking flushed and angry at the laughing blond. Barbara did her best to hide her smirk behind her hand. It really wasn't right for her to participate in the teasing of any of her students.

Luckily, she was saved from having to pretend much longer as her last two participants arrived, one in a yellow cab that stopped outside the gates and the other on a smooth rumbling motorcycle. Selina disembarked from her cab and pulled a decent sized suitcase from the trunk before sauntering through the gates. After the cab pulled away, Jason's bike pulled in and he drove it slowly past Selina who wiggled her fingers at him in greeting.

Jason parked his bike by the steps and pulled off his red full face helmet to reveal a riot of messy hair that he quickly tried to tame back.

"Are we late?" he asked.

Barbara checked her watch again. "Just barely. It doesn't matter, I'm just glad you're all here," Barbara said, smiling at all five of them.

"Timothy," Barbara addressed the younger psychic, pulling a small handheld camera from her bag as she did so. Tim jumped slightly at his name, but seemed to bring himself back under control quickly. "If I could ask you to do the honor of making first contact," Barbara explained, smiling as she brought the camera up and pointed it at Tim. A little red light on the front of the camera blinked steadily at him, indicating that it was recording.

"Sure," Tim replied. "What were you thinking."

"If you could just try the door handle and see what you get?" Barbara asked, keeping the camera trained on Tim as he nodded and came up the steps. She had left one of the double doors closed to try and keep some of the cold out. This is the door that Tim approached.

Barbara kept her eyes focused on the small display window that she had folded out of the recorder. The Tim on her screen took a deep breath, his shoulders rising and falling as his chest expanded and collapsed. He held his long thin fingers over the door handle, his breathing steady and his eyes closed. With telegraphed intention, Tim brought his hand down and wrapped his fingers around the carved handle. As soon as his hand was fully wrapped around the door handle, his whole body jerked as if he had been shocked.

Barbara heard shuffling behind her and heard Jason call Tim's name, but ignored she ignored them. She kept her camera pointed at Tim, intent on capturing his interaction with the house.

On camera, Tim was frozen with his head tilted down and his shoulders shaking slightly. "I loved you," he whispered faintly. Barbara barely heard him and she doubted that the mic on the camera picked it up. Cautiously, she stepped closer.

As she did so, Tim threw his head back and stared straight up. His already pale blue eyes looked even lighter, unfocused and shining with tears. His expression was one of betrayal and agony. "I loved you," he said again, stronger this time even as his voice warbled with unspoken tears.

Everyone was still, she couldn't hear the others so much as breathe in the morning air.

Tim's head tipped forward again and came to rest against the door with a soft thump. Barbara creeped closer.

"Why?" he was whispering, his lips barely moving with the sound. "I loved you."

"Tim!" Jason barked, panic sharp in his voice.

Tim jerked again, his body jumping similarly to how it had when he first connected to the house. He pulled away from the door and looked around, disorientation clear on his face. There were tears tracking their way down his cheeks.

Jason took the steps two at a time and reached for Tim. He brushed the pads of his fingers against the other man's cheeks, smudging away his tears "God, are you okay?" he whispered.

Tim bat his hands away, looking surprised at the wetness he found as he roughly rubbed at his face.

"What did you see?" Dick asked, walking up the steps slowly and coming to stand behind Jason.

"I didn't see anything," Tim mumbled. He still looked confused. "Just darkness everywhere."

"You were saying something," Barbara said sternly, still keeping the camera tracked on Tim's face.

Tim frowned back at her. "I didn't say anything," he argued, obstinance clear in his voice.

Everyone gathered around the door exchanged confused and worried glances, except for Damian whose sharp eyes were focused solely on Tim.

"I didn't hear or say anything," Tim said firmly. "All I saw was darkness. I felt weightless and cold. That's it," he snapped.

"Eerie," Selina breathed.

"For real," Steph agreed, looking visibly shaken.

Barbara snapped the display on the camera shut with a kind of finality. All eyes swiveled to her.

"Let's get started, shall we?" she smiled.

* * *

><p>"I was thinking we would start the tour here, in the solarium," Barbara said, leading the way through the manor and toward the large kitchen tucked into the north west corner of the building. Her trail of psychics followed behind her silently. Dick first, then Selina, followed by Steph holding tight to Tim's hand, being trailed by a concerned looking Jason and a frowning Damian.<p>

Barbara pulled a ring of keys from her bag and used an old dark metal skeleton key to unlock the door in the kitchen. The tumblers rolled out of the way with a loud clack. She pulled the old wooden door, painted white, toward her. It opened with the faint squeal of rusty hinges.

She took the first few steps down into the solarium and then stopped and waited for the others to follow her. They filed out slowly and made a half circle around her without instruction. As they came out, each person's head swiveled around to take in their surroundings. Barbara could imagine what each one of them were noticing and cataloguing.

The solarium was large and, at one time, was probably breathtakingly beautiful. The glass was set into a black wrought iron frame. Once could easily see where stone and brick had marked out flower beds and gardens. The dry husks of huge beautifully shaped trees stood tall and silent in the pale half light streaming through the now dirty windows. What was probably once moist and healthy dirt was dry and dusty now. Spouting from the dead earth were the dried and withered remains of plants and bushes. A pall of death and decay had fallen over that place in particular.

"This is the solarium of Wayne Manor, sometimes called the greenhouse," Barbara started explaining. "It was not in the original designs drawn up by Solomon Wayne. It was added at Katherine Wayne's behest shortly before construction was completed on the Manor. She specifically requested that it be built off of the servant's kitchen, which was unheard of at the time. She was a practical woman who wanted to be able to grow vegetables year round and therefore placed the greenhouse near the kitchen to make it easier to care for."

Barbara slowly started to walk through the solarium, still talking, her hands moving vaguely as she continued to explain.

"Katherine Wayne allowed all the servants full access to the solarium. She called it her health room and encouraged staff and guests alike to relax in the wicker chairs and stone benches that she placed intermittently among the beds of flowers and vegetables," Barbara explained. She stepped forward into a small corner of the solarium that still held a set of once white wicker chairs that were slowly coming apart. Hanging from the limb of a dead tree that reached out over the small sitting area was a silent and lonely bee's nest.

Barbara frowned at it. She wondered if someone was playing a joke on her.

"Beatrice Baxter," Barbara said slowly, still frowning up at the bee's nest, "was one of the first people to die inside of Wayne Manor. She was a friend of Katherine Wayne. She came to visit shortly after the birth of Katherine's first child. She especially enjoyed the solarium and expressed as much in her letters to Katherine and to others. One day, while sitting in the solarium and reading a small book of poetry, she was stung by a bee. She was later found dead with the book still in her lap by some passing servants. Her death was ruled an accident due to a severe case of anaphylactic shock."

Barbara turned to look back at the others and they all had their eyes fixed unblinking on the beehive behind her.

"Is that, like, a prop or something?" Steph asked, staring nervously at the bee's nest. It didn't escape Barbara that she had tucked herself slightly behind Tim, who wasn't looking much braver than her.

Barbara sighed and turned back to the nest to give it a glare. "No," she said simply, her displeasure ringing in her voice. "It wasn't here last week when I did my first walk through. I'm not sure how it got here."

"Do you think someone's messing with us?" Jason asked, his arms folded over his chest and his expression dark and forbidding.

Barbara sighed. "The investigation hasn't been made public, so far as I've been able to keep it a secret. Mr. Wayne in particular doesn't want this investigation to become public until he's ready. I would like to hope it's just a coincidence. Maybe I overlooked it when I was last here," she added doubtfully. She was sure she would have noticed something like a beehive where Beatrice Baxter had reportedly died. But, she couldn't be sure.

"I don't think you missed it," a sharp voice with the soft lilt of an accent rang out from the back of the group. Everyone turned to regard the young Wayne heir as he held up a small pink phone. "I think Todd's assessment is closer to the truth."

Striding forward, Barbara snatched the phone out of Damian's hand and glared down at it. It was obviously a girl's phone, the case pink with pale white polka dots on the back. The front was a flat black screen. Barbara pushed the lock button, then held it down when nothing happened. The phone didn't turn on.

"Where did you find this?" Barbara snapped, holding the phone up to Damian.

Damian glared at her, but tipped his chin to his left indicating a small black bag lying on its side and abandoned on a nearby path.

Quickly, Barbara grabbed the bag and pulled it open. Inside there was a small make up bag, a packet of mints, a wallet and ... a press badge. Barbara stared down in horror at the hawty smiling face of Vicki Vale, her name printed neatly above the typeface words 'GOTHAM GAZETTE'.

"Why..." Barbara began, rubbing the tips of her fingers against her forehead where she could feel a pressure beginning to build. "What in the world is she doing here?" she asked and knew that her voice sounded strained and emotional.

She could hear steps approaching her and when she looked up, Dick was at her elbow looking concerned.

"I have to call Bruce," she said, her eyes big and her mouth turned sharply down at the corners. Calling Bruce was the last thing she wanted to do. If he heard that Vicki Vale had actually broken into his family home due to the psychic investigation, he may call the whole thing off entirely.

"Hey, no," Dick replied, placing large warm hands on her bowed in shoulders. He read the anxiety and defeat in her eyes and wanted immediately to fix it. "She has to be around here somewhere, right? She wouldn't leave without all her stuff. I mean, she left her wallet, her phone, her _press badge_," Dick emphasized.

"She probably got spooked and dropped it," Selina added gently. Barbara felt the other woman's gentle hand settle on the small of her back and blushed. She felt terrible to have the two of them comforting her. She was supposed to be the lead of the investigation

"If she's still around, we'll find her. Then, we'll sit her down and have a long talk about the difference between journalistic ambition and breaking and entering," Dick said cheerily, giving Barbara the full force of a smile that could easily power half of Gotham, it was so bright.

Barbara smiled hesitantly back at him and took a deep breath. After she did, she stood up a little straighter. She dropped Vicki's badge and phone into her little black knock off purse.

"Thank you, both of you. You're right, Dick," she said. He smiled back at her. "We'll continue with the tour. We're bound to run into her eventually and when we do I can really give her a piece of my mind."

"That's the spirit," Selina said, smiling at Barbara.

Barbara tucked the bag under her arm and started to lead the way back to the kitchen. "Let's go upstairs, everybody. I still have a lot to show you."


	6. Chapter 6: The Tour

Barbara had to lift the patio door up off of its swollen doorjamb to push it open. It squealed and groaned as she forced it to open, flakes of dried and warped white paint chipping away as the door scraped against its frame.

Stepping down onto the cracked cement patio, Barbara took a moment to survey her surroundings. The cement patio was huge, stretching along the back side of the Manor and edged with low brick and cement walls. The stone and cement was cracked, ivy, grass and moss sprouting up in every soft moist corner or crevasse they could find.

Barbara tucked her keyring back into her bag and walked forward until she was stepping down crumbling steps and into the overgrown grass jungle that was once an impeccably groomed lawn. The shuffle of feet behind her assured her that the others were following in her wake.

She came to a stop in front of a degrading fountain and turned around with her arms thrown wide. She smiled widely at the range of faces coming up to stand around her.

"Welcome to the grounds of the stately Wayne Manor!" she announced loudly. Nearby, a few birds took off from a tree, startled and chirping angrily at her as they flew a safe distance away.

"It's a dump," Damian said flatly, arms crossed over his chest as he sneered at the overgrown lawn around him.

"It's certainly seen better days," Selina agreed, her voice wry as she carefully moved the long limb of a thorn bush out of her way with a delicate grip.

"I'm sure it's hard to imagine now, but Wayne Manor had the largest and most well kept grounds of any mansion for many years. Even after other wealthy families began to build in the land in and around Wayne Manor, they never surpassed it for sheer size when it came to land," Barbara said proudly, turning around to look at the wild riot of trees and plants that were growing all around her.

"I'd like you to try and picture this area as it once was. A verdant and carefully maintained lawn for the patio to look out on. There were rose and forsythia bushes dotted here and there. The centerpiece was this fountain behind me," Barbara said, turning to regard it again. "You may recognize it from yesterday."

"It's the fountain that Lucy Wayne was found in," Tim said quietly, his eyes were affixed to the statue of a woman standing at the head of the fountain. The statue was of a beautifully proportioned woman wrapped in a roman style robe, her wavy hair tucked into a bun at the nape of her neck. Her face was hidden behind her hands, her shoulders hunched in frozen sorrow. Tim's eyes looked haunted as he stared at the statue, as if he was still seeing the image of Lucy Wayne floating face down in the fountain behind his eyes. Steph, sensing his unease, pressed a little closer to his side.

"That's exactly right," Barbara replied. "This fountain was commissioned by Allen Wayne himself shortly after the manor was built. Other than that, I could find no more information about the fountain. I don't know who the artist of the statue is, I don't know who decided on the subject matter, or even if the statue was added before or after the actual fountain. Katherine Wayne wanted to destroy the fountain after Lucy was found in it, but Allen stood opposed to destroying it. After some time, as their grief started faded, neither of them brought it up again."

"What did people think?" Dick asked. "I mean, at the time. What did people think happened to her?"

"Oh, well," Barbara sighed and cast her eyes up as she tried to remember all of the conspiracy theories she had read about while doing her research. "Initially, the maid was suspected. Everyone was convinced that she must have been paid by somebody to spirit the girl away. The police interrogated her with the kind of brutality usually not paid to women during that time. After they released her, she had three broken fingers, a broken wrist, and a broken nose. She had pretty much convinced the police and anyone who had seen her after the interrogation that she didn't know what happened to Lucy."

Barbara saw most of her guests wince at the mention of the woman's injuries. Except for Damian, who continued to watch Barbara impassively.

"After the nursemaid was cleared, there were a lot of people who thought it might have still been an inside job. Maybe the maid didn't have anything to do with it, but another servant that Lucy knew or trusted could have lead her away. Still, a few people thought she might have run off on her own. Maybe she had stashed snacks and food in a tree or some hiding place? Then, one night, while playing in the fountain, her dress had become heavy and drug her down or she had fallen asleep and drowned."

"Did anyone suggest it might have been the curse?" Jason asked, scowling down at the murky water in the fountain.

"What curse?" Dick asked turning to Jason.

"Most people in Gotham believe that the Wayne family is cursed," Selina answered for Jason, rolling her eyes to express what she thought of that. "It's an old story."

"There were some people who believed it was related to the curse," Barbara responded. "But, that talk was mostly accredited to spiritualists and the superstitious. More than anything, it was a mystery! One that was both tragic and titillating. For those who remember it, it remains one of the great mysteries of Gotham."

"Wonderful, very interesting," Jason snarked. "I'm amazed we don't print that shit out and hand it out to tourists at bus stations. But, it is sort of morbid. And, this is coming from the guy who sees dead people. So, can we move on?" Jason asked, looking uncomfortable.

Barbara started to reach for her camera. "Is there anything you'd like to share with us for the sake of the investigation?" she asked Jason.

"No," Jason bit out, his lip curling slightly at the suggestion.

Barbara suppressed a sigh and pulled her hand out of her bag. She clapped her hands in front of her and smiled at the ranging expressions of disinterest and disconsolation. She smiled brightly.

"In that case, let's move right along!"

* * *

><p>"What is this place?" Steph asked in wonder as she ran up and down the strange hallway.<p>

Barbara smiled happily as she followed behind her. "It's called 'The Diminishing Hallway'. It's one of the stranger additions to the house made by Allen Wayne."

The hallway was made up of a rich dark red wood. The floors were covered with a thick dark red carpet, the walls paneled and the ceiling also made of wood, but with extravagant arches painted with gold paint trimming the edges every few feet. The fun started when one started to walk forward through this seemingly endless hall only to notice that the ceiling was getting lower and the walls were getting closer together. The hallway created the optical illusion that it was much longer than it actually was.

Dick was grinning widely as he ducked under one of the ornate arches. "This is so crazy. It's like a fun house!" he exclaimed, looking toward Barbara and smiling brightly as if it was gift she had given him specifically.

Barbara felt her stomach do a little flip. Her face was warm as she smiled back at him.

"Why build such a frivolous thing?" Damian asked from somewhere near her elbow. Barbara looked down to see the young boy frowning in disapproval at the adults walking and running up and down the hallway.

"At the time, I think most people just thought it was a fun or exorbitant way for Allen to spend his father's money. Although, historians now think that this hallway and the strange rooms like it may be a reflection of Allen Wayne's mental state at the time of the construction of Wayne Manor," Barbara explained frankly.

"Tt," Damian clicked his tongue, his sneer deepening slightly.

Barbara sighed and decided to continue to ignore Damian as much as she could. "Okay, everybody! Gather round!" she called, moving toward the middle of the hallway.

Slowly, the rest of her contingent gathered around her, Dick and Jason stooping slightly due to the low ceiling.

"I wanted to show you the hallway first, mostly because it's a lot of fun and really strange. But, also to point out that this is the location of the disappearance of Katherine Wayne," Barbara said.

A few heads started to swivel around to take in the hallway anew.

"She just disappeared, right?" Steph asked curiously. "Like, she was just walking down the hall and no one ever saw her again?"

"Correct," Barbara responded, nodding. "She was reportedly in some kind of a trance and didn't react to the servant girl who greeted her."

"Does this hallway go anywhere? Is there an exit in the direction she was walking?" Tim asked, frowning slightly, his brows coming together.

"There is, actually," Barbara said, walking further down the hall. She crouched slightly to move under the steadily lowering arches until she found the panel in the wall that she was looking for. Giving it a push, it clicked and then popped back out at her.

She pulled the false panel open and stepped aside to let the others through.

Tim was the first one step through the hidden door and into the room beyond.

"Whoa," he said, his voice awed and a little muffled in the hallway.

The others moved to step in behind him and Barbara followed after all of them were through.

Inside the room that Barbara had led them too was an office with all the modern fixtures that any office at the time of the manor's construction would have had. There were pendant lights situated above heavy wood desks. On the desks were ink blotters, typewriters and old mechanical calculators with large levers attached to their sides. Each desk had a desk lamp with a green shade. There were a few palm plants tucked into the corners of the room and dark green carpet runners placed between the aisles of desks. The extraordinary thing about the office was that everything was upside down.

The desks were on the ceiling, the blotters and machines affixed to their surface. Chairs sat on the ceiling at imperfect angles to their desks. The pendant lights stood straight up from the floor on long pipes. Opaque windows were set along their feet, what would have been high up on the wall if the room were right side up. A false light was set behind the frosted glass to give the impression that the windows looks outside.

"This guy missed his calling, really," Dick breathed. "Fun houses."

Jason pushed one of the lights and watched it slowly wave backward and forward in place. "I'll never understand rich people," he muttered.

"Couldn't Katherine have just exited the Manor?" Tim asked slowly, as he walked cautiously around the desks hanging above his head. "I mean, if there was an exit in the hallway, couldn't she have just up and run?"

"She could have. It's possible, but not probable," Barbara sighed. "She was an older woman and she was recognizable to most people in the area. If she wanted to disappear, she would have had to travel very far away or laid very low for the rest of her life. There were no events around the time of her disappearance to act as a stressor and make her run. She had no family left alive she could have gone to live with. She did have friends overseas, but why run away all of a sudden? It's about as mysterious as Lucy's death, really."

"This place is sort of freaking me out," Selina whispered to Barbara, crouching close by the red head and staring with big eyes at the heavy pieces of furniture on the ceiling. "Where's the exit?" she asked.

"It's right over here," Barbara said, smiling apologetically at Selina. Taking Selina by the hand, she led her through the aisle of desks on the ceiling and over to another false panel in the wall, this one was set up to look like one of the false windows set along the wall. Barbara pushed it open and paused before stepping inside.

"Oh, no!" Selina moaned. "This room is way worse," she cried.

With wide eyes, Barbara stepped over the threshold of the doubly false window and into a huge cavernous space. The walls were lined with tall bookshelves, easily reaching over ten feet high and filled with the leather bound spines and worn stamped lettering of old thick books. The ceiling was a gently curving half sphere, its ceiling painted with fluffy clouds and flying birds, a false sky reaching high above their heads. Hanging from the center of the room was a huge shining chandelier, sparkling with beautifully cut pieces of glass. The eerie part of the room was that the floor was a mirror, reflecting its own reflection back at itself. It looked as if Barbara was walking on nothing.

"What is this place?" she breathed.

She heard footsteps behind her and then Dick's deep voice chuckling, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. "This place just keeps getting better and better," he said, sounding excited and impressed in equal turns.

"I am definitely not going in there! That is too creepy," Barbara heard Selina saying from outside the room.

"It'll be okay, Ms. Kyle," she heard Tim tell her. "We'll hold onto you. Look, the others are all able to walk on the floor without a problem."

"I've never seen this place before," Barbara said, turning her wide eyes back on the group of psychics carefully easing their way into the room. "It's not on any of the plans."

"I've seen it before," Damian replied with none of his usual sound of superiority. His eyes were wide, the frown wiped from his face as he looked around the room in wonder. "I remember coming here when I was small. I was afraid to go inside. I thought I would fall in."

"A completely reasonable assumption," Selina muttered, clutching tightly to Tim's arm as Steph smiled and patted her on her back.

"Wait. What do you mean it's not on any of the plans?" Jason asked, squinting in disbelief at Barbara.

"I'm not lying!" she squawked, spinning around and around as she looked at the library that had no right to exist at all. "I've looked over all the plans, every single one that was submitted over the years and there were a lot of them, I assure you. This isn't on any of them. That door is supposed to open out into the north hallway."

"How is that possible?" Jason snapped.

"I don't know!" Barbara snapped back.

"Hey, guys," Steph called out cautiously.

Everyone turned to look at her. She was standing directly below the chandelier, slowly standing from a crouch with something held in her hands. As she turned around, Barbara saw that she had a large expensive looking camera clutched in her hands.

"I think someone got here before us," Steph said, frowning down at the camera in her hands.

Barbara hurried over. "Vicki?" she asked, looking at the camera herself.

Steph flipped the camera over and on the bottom written on a piece of tape were the words 'Property of V. Vale' in loopy feminine script.

Barbara cussed colorfully and spun around, a hand pressed to her forehead.

"None of this makes any sense," Jason huffed. "Not only do we have magical phantom rooms that were never recorded on any plans, we also have some crazy reporter girl running around the mansion dropping her shit behind her like fucking breadcrumbs!" Jason threw his hands in the air.

"Come on, guys," Dick said, holding his hands out in front of him. "Let's try to keep our heads here," he started to say. But, as he mustered up whatever speech he was getting ready to unleash, a strange light started to emanate from the glass beneath Steph's feet.

Squealing, Steph jumped back and ran the few feet back to where most of the others were gathered closer to the door. They all watched with wide eyes as the light built and built along with a strange whispering sound, similar to what you might expect to hear if a large number of voices were talking at once very quietly so that no one word could be separated out from the other.

As the light and sound built, it seemed to also slowly rise from the mirrored floor to build a column of ghostly light in the center of the room. It couldn't have measured more than four or five feet in height. Buried in the swirling and ever changing complexities of light, the image of a small person, a little girl, began to appear.

"Okay, you guys can see this, right?" Jason whispered, as the sound and light seemed to plateau.

"Hell to the yeah," Steph whispered back, still clutching Vicki's camera in her hands.

Barbara fumbled in her bag to pull out her handheld camera. While she did so, Damian began to slowly walk forward, his eyes fixed on the apparition in the middle of the room. She turned her camera toward him momentarily, just in time to see Dick snap out of his stupor too late to grab Damian by the back of his shirt and haul him backward.

"Damian," Barbara said from behind the camera. "Step away from it, please."

Damian either didn't hear her or just ignored her. The whispering seemed to become louder as he got closer.

"Kid!" Jason barked, starting to stride forward until Tim latched himself onto his arm and held him back. "Get away from that thing!" he yelled.

Still, Damian didn't seem to notice or pay any heed to Jason's sharp voice. He continued to put one foot in front of the other. As he got closer, he reached out, his thin arm reaching toward the light, his fingertips brushing against it even as it seemed to strain toward him.

With a harried yelp from Steph, the mirror library was suddenly filled with the sound of a camera flashing, its shutter loud and its flash blinding. Steph held the camera up in front of her face like a warding charm, her own face averted and her eyes squeezed shut even as she continued to press the button for the shutter.

In the middle of the room, the thing screeched and and writhed. In a bright flash of otherworldly light, it disappeared.

As soon as it was gone, Dick rushed forward and grabbed Damian by his upper arm, dragging him backward.

"What were you thinking?" he snapped. "This isn't a game! You absolutely should not have tried to engage that thing."

"It knew my name," Damian rasped. His eyes stared vacantly at the spot where the apparition had once been. "It called my name like it knew me."

Dick frowned and looked up, exchanging a worried look with Jason.

"It didn't know you," Jason said, roughly grabbing Damian by the upper arm and giving him a little shake. The boy frowned slightly, looking confused, but offended. The familiar expression on Damian's face calmed Barbara somewhat. "They'll try anything to make you engage with them. Don't," Jason said shortly.

Damian frowned and looked down, his expression communicating that he was feeling properly chastised.

Barbara took a deep breath and smiled a wobbly smile back at the others. "Is everyone okay?" she asked.

She got a handful of a nods and few vocal affirmatives, everyone still looking a little shaken.

"Good. How about lunch?"


	7. Chapter 7: The Party

NOTE: This chapter has been edited slightly from its initial post! A nice commenter pointed out that Damian is actually vegetarian in comicbook canon, not Tim. So, I've edited this chapter to reflect that.

* * *

><p>Jason slapped a generous amount of ham onto his roll and topped it with a thick slice of american cheese. Once the sandwich looked sufficiently thick, he squirted some mustard onto the top and flipped the roll closed to complete the sandwich. He took a huge bite, easily taking out a quarter of the sandwich. The meat was soft and juicy, the cheese sharp, and the mustard bity.<p>

"These are pretty good," Jason commented around the food in his mouth. A few other people with full mouths hummed their agreement where they were sitting around him on the odd arrangement of old couches and armchairs.

Damian harrumphed quietly from the armchair he had tucked himself into. There was a paper plate with a few sticks of celery, two baby carrots and a small dollop of ranch on it next to him. It was mostly untouched. He was pouting expertly from his corner of the room, his knees tucked up in front of him and an accusatory stare pointed out at the rest of them.

"I'm sorry again about the food, Damian," Barbara said, wincing at herself. She had asked all of her psychics about any dietary restrictions or other allowances she might have to make for them. However, she had completely forgotten to ask those same questions about her youngest attendee. "I can't believe your father didn't tell me you are a vegetarian," Barbara said again.

"Tt," Damian clicked his tongue in either annoyance or dismissal. "Father doesn't take my self-imposed dietary restrictions very seriously," he replied.

Barbara frowned back at Damian. She supposed she could understand that, as someone who had also been a teenager who had made many decrees to her family that had largely been ignored.

"Are all of you about done with your lunch?" Barbara asked the rest of the group.

She got a handful of hesitant affirmatives around the room.

"You don't have to stop picking, but if you don't mind I'll pick up with the rest of the tour," she explained.

"There's more?" Dick asked, his eyebrows raised and looking surprised to hear that there was more to learn about Wayne Manor's history.

Barbara smiled at him deviously. "There are just two more spots I'd like to cover here on the first floor," Barbara explained, holding up two fingers and wiggling them in what she hoped was an enticing manner.

"The first is actually right here, in the parlor," she explained, walking toward the fireplace that was still, cold and inert. "It was right here," she said, pointing up, "that Allen Wayne hung himself." Six pairs of eyes looked up to where Barbara was pointing to stare at the exposed beams above her head. The ceiling suddenly appeared a lot more threatening than it had previously.

"Goodbye, appetite," Steph said with a sigh as she sat her turkey and swiss sandwich aside. "I knew ye."

"Why classify it as misadventure?" Tim asked in regards to the classification of Allen Wayne's death. He turned around to stare curiously at Barbara, his meager meal already forgotten. "Did people really not know he was mentally unstable?"

"I don't know if people didn't _know_, exactly," Barbara replied hesitantly. "More like, they carefully averted their eyes from the obvious," Barbara demurred. "Allen was a celebrated architect. He could have moved to New York or back to his native Boston and probably made substantially more money, but he stayed in Gotham. Many of the people of Gotham had reason to humor him whenever his stories or jokes got a little out of hand."

"Why don't you tell us just how crazy he was?" Jason asked as he reclined on one of the antique lounges set around the room.

Barbara gave him an unimpressed look, but he just grinned brazenly back at her.

Sighing, Barbara caved. "Allen Wayne, as I mentioned previously, probably suffered from multiple mental diseases. One of them was detailed and vivid delusions. Katherine notes in her journals that when she first met Allen, he had regaled her with stories of meeting time travelers who assured him that he would help to make the Wayne family great. He also believed that Wayne Manor, this very house, had a mind of its own and that it built itself and grew without his input."

Jason snorted. "Not an altogether unbelievable prospect, considering what we just saw," he smirked.

Barbara ignored him. "He also believed in the family curse and engaged spiritualists of various calibers to lay protections around the Manor. He attested to seeing shadowed figures around him all the time, whispering, but never loudly enough that he could hear what they said. The stories really go on and on," Barbara explained, frowning.

"But, he's the guy we list as one of Gotham's founding fathers," Jason laughed, shrugging his shoulders.

"Not incorrectly," Barbara countered. "Suffering from mental illness did not stop him from being a brilliant architect and from designing most of the business district of Gotham during the late 1800s."

The smirk fell off of Jason's face and sat looking bullish on his lounge. Steph tittered behind her hand and Tim gave Jason an unimpressed look.

"Poor Jason," Selina purred, giving Jason a pitiable look that was ruined by the slight upward curve of her mouth at the corners. "Would you like some salve? I'm sure that burn stings."

"Oh, my god. Shut up, everyone," Jason said flatly.

Barbara hid a snort behind her hand. "Now now, children" she said, stifling a laugh. "Jason's right to be surprised. Allen Wayne's mental state was not the best and he quickly deteriorated after the death of his daughter."

The room sobered quickly at the mention of the young Lucy Wayne's mysterious death.

"How did they keep it under wraps?" Dick asked around a bite of sandwich. "Did they pay off the coroner or something?"

"No, actually, the authorities offered to change Allen's cause of death as a favor to the Wayne family. You see, Allen's father, Solomon, was a famous judge with a long career in Gotham. So, the Wayne family had friends in law enforcement. And, like I said, Allen Wayne was a respected figure in the growing city of Gotham. It didn't do anybody any good to have his name besmirched."

"That's so sad," Steph said, staring up at the ceiling, her chin resting on top of her hands. "Everyone was just looking out for themselves. The Wayne's must have felt so alone," she sighed. "Allen was alone in his head, their son was alone at school, and Katherine was alone in this big house. It really is tragic."

Everyone was quiet for a long moment after that, a considering silence falling over all of them.

Barbara cleared her throat loudly to draw everyone's attention back to her. "If you're all done with your lunch for now, there is one more place that I'd like to point out to all of you."

Around the room, the group of people mumbled their assent and slowly pushed their paper plates into a nearby trashcan. They followed Barbara as she lead the way out of the parlor and into a game room set further back into the house. The room was wide and the ceiling slightly lower than the rest of the houser. There was another wide hearth set into the back wall of the room. The walls were paneled with a dark wood, the ceiling a similar color in a repeating square pattern. There was a thick dark red carpet on the floor covered in most places by intricately woven carpets. In the room were two heavy looking pool tables, a dart board set up on a nearby wall, and a number of comfortable looking leather couches and arm chairs pushed against the walls and gathered around the fireplace.

"Okay, pool," Jason said, nodding. "I can get behind that."

Barbara boosted herself up onto a nearby pool table and gracefully crossed one leg over the other. She smiled to see that Dick's eyes carefully followed the movement.

"This is officially called the 'Billiard's Room'. When Katherine Wayne would host parties here, it was one of the most densely packed rooms in the Manor," Babs explained.

"The parties that used to be thrown in this place were legendary," Selina sighed, running appreciative fingertips over the deeply polished wooden edge of a nearby billiard's table.

"After Katherine disappeared, the Manor remained uninhabited for some time," Barbara continued, a little more soberly. "Kenneth Wayne, Katherine and Allen's son, refused to live in the home his father had built. But, he allowed his wife, Laura, to use the Manor to host a variety of events. Laura Wayne was obsessed with the then burgeoning scene of Hollywood and would throw parties for all the up and coming stars and pay to ship them from out west to attend. She made her Wayne Manor parties _the party_ to be at, at that time," Barbara explained, smiling.

"I love all that stuff," Selina sighed, fingering an ornate frame on the opposite wall. From within the frame, beautiful black and white faces smiled back at her. "Old Hollywood glamor! What I would do to be able to attend one of those parties!" Selina swooned, turning around to lean against the wall and smile dreamily at the others.

Barbara tittered a little behind her hand. "I'm glad to see someone's excited. Then, you've heard of what happened to the actress, Olivia Havilland?"

The smile quickly dropped off of Selina's face and she regarded Barbara with a keen eye.

"Yes, I have," she replied. "Don't tell me this is..." Selina trailed off as she looked around the room, a faint expression of sharp analytical interest overtaking her beautiful features.

"Olivia Havilland," Barbara started, intending to explain for the rest of the guests who looked confused by their exchange, "was a famous up and coming actress in the 1930s. She was a favorite of Laura Wayne and a big hit at every party that Mrs. Wayne threw. In particular, Laura made it a point to have Olivia at her New Year's Eve party that she threw in Wayne Manor every year.

"Olivia attended the New Year's Eve party of 1939. She was a popular attendee, as she usually was. She was last seen in the billiard's room, where we find ourselves now. She excused herself to use the restroom and was never seen again."

There was a long pause, before Tim, whom Barbara could always count on to be the voice of reason in any room, spoke up.

"Wait, she disappeared from a house crowded with people?" he asked incredulously.

"Exactly."

"That doesn't make any sense," he replied flatly. "Someone must have seen entering the bathroom or leaving the building."

"You're exactly right, it doesn't make any sense," Barbara agreed easily. "But, that's the truth. In the initial statements, everyone agreed that the billiard room was the last place she was seen. Afterward, as Olivia's disappearance became more sensational, people came forward who claimed to see her leave the Manor in the arms of a mysterious gentleman. Some said they saw her stumble off alone. A variety of different reports started to crop up. But, I prefer to go by what everyone initially said the night after the party. Everything else was most likely just an attempt to get an interview and a picture in the paper."

"So, that's two ladies that have disappeared here, right?" Steph asked slowly.

Barbara smiled at her sympathetically. "An argument could definitely be made that Wayne Manor favors its women."

"That is so creepy," Steph muttered, frowning back at Barbara.

"Okay, so this is a house that eats women and kills everyone else?" Dick asked, laughing. Though his laugh had a hysterical edge to it.

"Pretty much," Barbara replied with a shrug.

"I know you told us all this in the orientation, but ..." Dick trailed off.

"It's a little more real once you're here, huh?" she asked, hopping off the edge of the pool table.

"Yeah," Dick replied sheepishly.

Barbara gave him a friendly smile and a warm pat on the shoulder. "No worries," she assured him. "Like I said, the house has been inactive for years."

"Tell that to the glowing disembodied apparition we saw upstairs," Jason mumbled with a sour expression.

Barbara frowned slightly. "That was a little unexpected," she allowed. "But, hopefully its just a sign that the house and its unseen occupants are reaching out to us. Which is, of course, exactly what we want," Barbara smiled, pulling out her camcorder and pointing it at Jason with a wink.

Jason sneered and flipped her and her camera off.

"Well, that's it for the tour!" Barbara said, snapping her camera shut and giving Jason a frosty smile. "How do you guys feel about pizza?"

* * *

><p>Twenty minutes later, there was a large warm fire crackling in the fireplace and the radio was crooning soft melodies from the corner of the game room. Jason and Tim were camped out on a low well worn leather couch against the far wall, their heads tilted together as they discussed something seemingly intimate; serious expressions, despite small smiles flitting across their mouths from time to time. Selina was trying to teach an energetic Steph and a surly Damian how to play pool. Damian was excelling quickly, while Steph seemed to show no signs of improvement, except for managing not to scratch the table with her pool queue.<p>

"Why the serious face?" Dick asked from behind her.

Barbara jumped slightly, crumpling the handful of readouts she held in her hand, before turning to smile nervously at the dark handsome psychic behind her.

"God, you scared me," Barbara laughed, huffing out a breath and pressing a hand to her heart. She had been zoning out while going over the baseline data that her equipment had picked up while they were going about their business on the tour. So far it was confusing, to say the least.

"Sorry about that," Dick replied, smiling apologetically. He held two dark glass bottles in his hand. "I found these in the kitchen. I don't suppose Mr. Wayne would mind if we cracked a few bottles?" he asked hopefully.

Barbara took one of the bottles' from Dick's hand and brushed a thick film of dust off of the label with her fingertips. When she could finally make out the writing there, her eyebrows shot toward her hairline.

"Dick, these are really old!" she exclaimed. "Where did you find these?"

"In the wine cellar," he replied simply.

"Wine cellar?" Barbara asked, confused. So far as she knew, Wayne Manor didn't have a wine cellar.

"Yeah. There's a door in the floor of the pantry that leads down to it. Mr. Wayne said we could help ourselves to any food in the kitchen, right? Does booze count as food?" Dick asked, a laugh skirting around the edges of his words.

"Booze totally counts as food," Jason threw in, appearing, it seemed, from out of nowhere behind Dick. He plucked the remaining bottle out of Dick's hand and whistled at the vintage. "The Wayne's sure know how to roll, huh?" he asked, laughing.

Barbara sighed. She didn't really want to be the bad guy and tell them to put it back, since she doubted that Bruce knew that he had a wine cellar filled with rare vintage wine in his abandoned family home. She already felt a little too much like a tour guide for rowdy elementary school children after spending much of the day touring the mansion.

"Well, okay," Barbara replied reluctantly. "But, just these two bottles," she added, taking the other bottle out of Jason's hand and turning away from him and her research to take them back to the kitchen.

She heard Jason yell something to the effect of "Yay, booze!" to Tim who sounded like he snarked something back at him, but Barbara didn't hear the rest of whatever they said. Dick followed her out into the hall and then into the kitchen. Barbara shuffled through kitchen drawers for something to open the bottles with while Dick boosted himself up onto a nearby counter.

"Sooo..." he started hesitantly. "This place is pretty far out, huh?" he continued awkwardly, smiling dopily in Barbara's direction.

Babs snorted out a laugh. "Yes, this place is pretty 'far out'," Barbara agreed, adding air quotes for the full effect. "Probably a little more than I expected, actually," she added ruefully.

Dick's smile dimmed a little. "Hey, that's good, right? I mean, if we come back from this investigation with big time evidence, it could make your career," Dick said enthusiastically.

Barbara pulled a corkscrew from the back of the last drawer she checked. It was old, with a wide wooden handle atop a long sharply pointed spiral shaped metal dowel. She frowned down at it thoughtfully and wished she could find a more modern bottle opener. She had never used a plain corkscrew to open a wine bottle before.

"Furthering my career is great and all," Barbara said down to the corkscrew she held in her hand. "But, I don't want to do it at the expense of other people."

She tossed the corkscrew toward Dick and he snatched it out of the air without taking his eyes off of her.

"I mean, this was all theoretical when I was planning it out. I knew the house reacted too and communicated best with psychics. I knew if I gathered a well rounded group of psychics to take with me on the investigation, my chances of an encounter would go way up." Barbara crossed her arms over her chest and looked out a nearby window, a frown etched across her features. A nearby tree limb scratched against the glass. "We haven't even begun trying to reach out to whatever is here and we already had an encounter. And, it wasn't any of my experienced adult psychics who was targeted in that encounter, it was an eleven year old boy."

Barbara sighed and ran a hand through her thick red hair. "I may not like Damian very much, but he is just a boy and he is my responsibility. I worry about continuing this investigation, if the spirits here are going to target him."

Dick frowned at Barbara, his expression troubled. She immensely appreciated that he was taking her and her concerns seriously.

"Don't worry, Babs," he said, his voice pitched slightly lower than she was used to hearing from him. "I mean, we're all here and we'll all keep an eye on Damian. I'm sure no one here would want to see a kid, let alone anyone else, get hurt. We'll watch out for each other. And, if it will make you feel better, I'll keep an eye out especially for the kid," Dick added with a lopsided smile.

Barbara found herself smiling back despite herself.

"Thanks," she said softly. "I'd appreciate that."

She cleared her throat. "Now, then. Are you going to open that or am I going to have to show off my muscles here?" she asked, pointing at the bottle of wine behind him.

Dick grinned more widely and picked put the bottle.

Before Dick could begin to pry the cork out of the dusty bottle, a loud banging reverberated through the house.

'BANG BANG BANG!'

A silence followed until it was broken by the sound of Jason's voice yelling out "I'll get it!"

Jason strode down the large open hallway, his boots clicking faintly on the dusty marble floor. He pulled open the front door, counterweights in the wall banging slightly as they worked to help him pull it open.

Illuminated by the porchlight directly above the door stood a tall emaciated figure, his skin almost white in the pale artificial light overhead, his hair a bright bottled green. The man was wearing a red cap and a red and white polo shirt with the words 'Marco's Pizza' patched in red on the top right breast. The cap threw a deep black shadow over his eyes.

He smiled widely at Jason, his lips bright red and chapped and his teeth yellowed and crooked. He balanced a red box shaped bag in one hand and a slip of paper in the other. He offered Jason the piece of paper and Jason took it, checking the bottom of the receipt for the total.

"Hey, nice digs," the pizza boy laughed, his voice high and raspy.

Jason pulled out his wallet and handed over a few bills.

"Keep the change, bud," Jason said, taking the stack of pizza boxes as the guy pulled them out of the warmer bag and handed them over to him.

"Thanks, pal!" the pizza guy replied laughing, his voice cracking high and a little frantic at the end.

Jason closed the door with a loud 'Thud!' and turned around with the hot pizza boxes balanced on top of his right hand. He pulled a face and raised an eyebrow at the now closed door. He watched the headlights of the pizza guy's car as he pulled out of the circle driveway.

"That wasn't weird," he muttered to himself as he carried the boxes back to the billiard room.

"Pizza's here?" Barbara asked as she carried the two open bottles back into the room.

"Yep," Jason replied, putting the boxes down on an empty coffee table and starting to pop them open.

"Perfect! So is the wine," Barbara smiled, sitting the bottles down on a nearby table as Dick came in behind her to set out a stack of paper cups.

"Oh, we are going to be classy tonight, my friends," Selina crowed as she danced enthusiastically toward the open wine.

"I'm not opening any more bottles, so try and make these two last," Barbara warned, as she stood sentry over the liquor.

Selina poured a small measure into a cup and took a dainty sip. "Phew!" she called, blowing out a long breath through red painted lips. "Won't need much of this anyway! Strong stuff," she commented.

"Maybe I'll skip the wine, then," Steph commented, frowning at the two dusty bottles on the table.

Jason was piling his paper plate high with cheesy steaming pizza, fully ignoring the small group gathered around the wine bottles. Tim had already snagged a slice of vegan white pizza for himself and was half done with it, a rapturous expression on his face.

It didn't take long for the wine and pizza to dissipate into the variety of mouths ranged around them. Tim lectured Jason over how much pepperoni pizza he was eating, Damian and Selina traded compliments on the vegan pizza, and Barbara and Dick ended up putting away much of the wine by themselves, cozied up close together near the roaring fireplace.

Someone turned up the radio, though Barbara couldn't remember who. It was an oldies station, beautiful and boisterous big band music filling the warm cozy room. Her head felt warm and bubbly, the wine seemingly lifting the emotional weight away from her to leave her feeling as if she could traipse around the room on tiptoe and not break a sweat. Which, she supposed, she could. She did practice ballet and wasn't that rusty quite yet.

"May I have this dance?" a gallant voice asked. When Barbara looked up, she was glad to see Dick's smiling face looking down at her. Though, she couldn't imagine who else she was expecting.

"If you insist," Barbara replied, taking the hand he proffered and allowing him to haul her to her feet. She stumbled slightly, the room spinning a little around her and landed against his chest with a small laugh.

"Methinks the lady is a bit unsteady on her feet," Dick laughed, locking his hands in the small of her back.

Barbara smirked up at him. "No, I think you're mistaking my lightness for unsteadiness," she replied, physically removing his hands from the small of her back so that she could clasp them in her own and lead him away from the little group of couches and chairs and into the big open marble floored hallway. "I'm very light on my feet!" she declared loudly, holding Dick's hand above her head so that she could spin quickly and enjoy the stability that his hand afforded her.

When her spinning left her off balance and staggering, Dicks helped to steady her with his strong hands on her hips. "Whoah, whoah, whoah," he laughed, as he helped her regain her balance. "I see I was completely mistaken," he continued to laugh as she leaned against him.

"Completely," she agreed.

"Can we break in on this dance?" a feminine voice called from the game room.

Barbara looked up to see Selina swaying into the hall with a sour looking Damian on her arm, his back ramrod straight. He looked nervous, but determined.

"The more the merrier," Dick replied for her. Barbara was glad he had answered. She wasn't sure she would have been able to stop herself from commenting on Damian's expression. She didn't think she'd ever seen someone look like they wanted to dance any less than he did. But, at the same time he looked stubbornly determined to do just that.

"Wonderful!" Barbara heard Selina sing, before Dick had her swinging around in circles, the room turning into smudges of brown and white and red behind his face as they turned round and round.

"You're a wonderful dancer," Barbara heard Selina say from somewhere to her left.

"Of course," Damian replied, his voice stiff but slightly pleased. "I have perfect timing and hand eye coordination. Mother never would have allowed me into good company without me knowing how to waltz, at the least."

Selina laughed, her voice bright and tinkling, mixing perfectly with the wailing of trumpets and sax. Barbara buried a laugh in Dick's chest, titillated to hear Selina working her natural womanly wiles on an eleven year old boy. She was sure it would only help to swell Damian's amazing ego, either way.

Barbara looked up over Dick's shoulder and noticed a pair of dark heads swirl past her. She pulled away from Dick slightly to blink over at the sight of Tim and Jason dancing closely together. They were both smiling, Jason taking Tim's hand so that he could give him a quick spin, surprising a burst of laughter from the younger man.

"They're cute, huh?" Dick said, following Barbara's eyes.

Babs looked up at Dick, surprised.

"Maybe if this whole professorship thing doesn't work out, you have a career waiting for you as a psychic matchmaker?" Dick suggested with a waggle of his eyebrows.

"Haha, you're so funny," Barbara replied dryly, though she knew a smile was stretching wide across her face.

"Okay, seriously. Someone better offer to dance with me right now, or I'm going to flip my shit," Steph said loudly from the side lines to a loud burst of laughter in reply from the different couples dancing to the sound of the loudly crooning radio.

"Oh, darling," Selina cried. "Come to me!"

Barbara laid her head against Dick's strong chest and watched the bouncy blond run over to Selina and her small dance partner. She closed her eyes and for a moment allowed herself to believe that maybe everything would work out okay.


	8. Chapter 8: That Night

It didn't take long before everyone was tired and sprawled out on various surfaces yawning and blinking heavily. Shortly after roping everyone into helping to clean up the small graveyard of paper plates, cups and pizza boxes, Barbara was herding her group of investigators up the stairs and into their separate rooms.

They had all selected rooms on the second floor shortly after arriving. For convenience's sake, Barbara had asked that they all select rooms close to one another and they had mostly complied.

Damian had chosen the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. He didn't really care what the bedroom looked like or where it was located. Since he was the first person (besides Barbara) to arrive, he had run up the stairs and threw his bag into the first room he saw without really looking at it. He didn't get a chance to take another look at his room until he was getting ready for bed that night.

It was a plain room, as plain as any of the bedrooms in Wayne Manor got anyway. The walls were wallpapered with a pale gray print with ivory colored vines crawling vertically up and down the walls. There were two windows in the wall directly across from the door, hung with long off white lace curtains that hung down and pooled on the floor. The floor was wood, thin old wood slats that were polished and waxed by years of tread and ran horizontally across the floor to end at a plain footboard. The furniture was plain too, a basic medium brown wood garnished with gold colored paint along the edges. The bed was a sleigh bed, the head and footboard elegantly curved. There was a dresser and a vanity pushed against another wall. An old chifferobe was pushed against the wall closest to the door. Damian had stashed his bookbag and dufflebag there without bothering to unpack them.

Damian rushed to jump into the bed, his feet cold despite the rug laid between his feet and the bare floorboards. He pulled the heavy sheet and comforter up over him and laid staring at the ceiling. It was plaster, with some small hairline cracks stretching out from the corners. He still felt a little energetic, but he could also feel sleep dragging at him, making his limbs heavy and his mind lethargic.

Rolling over, Damian pulled on the short chain hanging from the lamp beside his bed. With a click, the room was thrown into darkness.

Snuggling down into the bedding, Damian pulled the blankets up to his ear and rolled onto his side, pulling his knees up toward his chest. Around him, the sound of the house shifting and moaning kept him awake. He wasn't used to the sounds the Manor made, so very much unlike the quiet hum of heating and cooling and elevators that the penthouse made at night.

Damian shifted in his bed, worried that he wouldn't be able to fall asleep. He started counting backwards in arabic in an attempt to settle his mind. He only got to five before he drifted off and fell asleep.

Until a softly spoken sound drew him out of it.

Grumbling, Damian rolled back to his other side, toward the sound. He kept his eyes closed and tried to fall back to sleep, sure the sound had just been a product of his dreaming.

But, he heard it again, the sound of his name whispered in a high voice against a backdrop of soft tapping.

Frowning, Damian sat up and blinked blearily at the slowly materializing image of the room around him. The moon was streaking pale light through the lacy curtains, faintly illuminating the vague outlines of the furniture pressed up against the wall.

Looking to his left, Damian noticed that the door to the chifferobe was open, the mirror attached to the interior of the door shining back at him. Standing just inside the open door was Lucy Wayne.

She was dressed in a black and white sailor outfit, a red neckerchief tied under her collar. She was also completely soaked, her black hair stuck to her face, her pigtails hanging heavy and sopping over her shoulders. A small puddle was developing around her feet, where her heavy pleated skirt dripped steadily onto the floorboards. But, other than how wet she was, she looked normal and alive.

She regarded Damian with large sad blue eyes and held out a small chubby hand to him.

"Damian," she called, a small whine edging her voice.

Damian felt a fog begin to come over his senses, his feeling of reticence and caution slowly fading from his mind. He shook his head hard and blinked heavily, trying to shake the fog from his head.

He pressed a hand pressed to his forehead at the point where a sharp pain was beginning to develop. Damian slowly climbed out of his bed, staggering and fighting himself the whole way. His toes touched the threadbare carpet on the floor, coldness seeping up into his feet as the warmth of sleep was slowly sapped away from him.

"Damian," Lucy said again, her voice confident now.

Damian took one step toward her. Then, another. He pressed both hands to his face and tried to remember when he got out of bed.

He took another step.

And a sharp rap sounded at the door behind him.

Damian jumped, gasping slightly. He pulled his hands away from his face and stared at the place where Lucy had been standing. The door of the chifferobe was still open, but there was no more Lucy. There was still water left behind. It stood out against the dry floorboards, the color dingy and dirty in the pale moonlight.

Damian stared at the water on the floor for a few seconds, trying desperately to reason away why it was there. There was another loud rap at the door.

Growling in frustration, Damian turned on his heel, marched toward the door and pulled it open before the person on the other side could knock again.

Dick stood out in the hall with his hand poised to knock on Damian's door again. He blinked down in surprise at Damian and the murderous expression painted across his face.

"What do you want, Grayson?" Damian bit out, glaring up at the man in front of him.

Dick took a visible step back. He opened his mouth, eyebrows drawing down in self-defense, until he seemed to reign himself in and think better of whatever he was going to say. Taking a deep breath, Dick started over.

"I'm, uh, having a little trouble sleeping," Dick said haltingly.

Damian's only response was to raise an eyebrow. Despite the lack of response, the implied 'What do you want me to do about it?' was very clear from Damian's expression and body language.

Dick coughed awkwardly, before continuing, "I was hoping we could share a bed? I'm too embarrassed to ask anyone else," Dick whispered at the end, blushing self consciously despite himself. His attempt at subterfuge was painfully obvious to the young boy in front of him as well as to himself.

The young Wayne heir was about to turn Dick away, when he was struck by a thought. Nervously, Damian checked over his shoulder. The chifferobe door was still open and the floor in front of it still shone in the moonlight, moisture gathered in drops on the floorboards.

Sighing, Damian looked back at Dick, who seemed to be preparing himself for rejection. "Fine," Damian snapped, immediately turning away from the door and climbing back into bed. He left the door open behind him, a silent invitation.

"R-really?" Dick stuttered from the hall before stepping into the room.

Damian was grateful that he didn't say anything else. The boy heard Dick close the door behind him with a soft click and then he felt a weight cause the bed to dip behind him. The warmth of another body settled against Damian's back. Damian shifted slightly, the feeling of sharing a bed alien to him, something he had never experienced before.

But, he was already tired and the warmth of Dick's body quickly soaked through his body. Sleep weighed him down and quickly pulled him deep into its tepid waters.

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, down the hall, Selina Kyle was sleeping restlessly.<p>

She had chosen for herself a slightly more lavish room. It was furnished in dark woods and deep reds and shining gold. The walls were paneled on the bottom half, the top a red and gold filigree wall paper. The floor was covered with a thick deep red carpet. The furniture was large, heavy and regal, the wood worked and carved into beautiful abstractions. She was sleeping in a large four poster bed, a heavy red curtain hung above the bed with dark red tassels hanging from the edges.

Despite the lavish accommodations, Selina tossed and turned, her sleep haunted by terrible dreams of death and despair. Images of a woman hanging from a rope by her throat danced between images of huge horrid beasts rising from the surf of a tumultuous ocean. Running through all these churning confusing images was a steady beat, 'thump, thump, thump, thump,' like a war drum or a panicked heartbeat.

In one particularly savage thrash, Selina threw her arm out and slapped her hand against the nearby bedside table, startling herself awake.

Hissing in pain, Selina cradled her hand against her chest and tried to clear the cobwebs from her head. She could remember flashes from whatever dream she had been having, but nothing was coming through clearly. Which was unusual for her, normally her dreams were vividly clear and often prophetic. Whatever she was dreaming most recently was obfuscated and confusing.

Sighing, Selina buried her face in her pillow and decided to try and forget about it.

Which was when she heard it.

Despite being awake, the endless tattoo of thumping continued through her consciousness. Except, it sounded much closer and much more real now.

Her hands trembling slightly, Selina pushed herself up onto her elbows and looked to her right, where the sound was emanating. In the dim slash of moonlight coming through a nearby window, Selina could make out a pair of feet. They were dressed in shining dress shoes and long tailored trousers. They were men's feet, hanging in the air and swinging loosely back and forth. Every time they swung to the left, they hit the wall and created the distinctive 'thump' that Selina had been hearing in staccato across her dreamscape.

Gasping, Selina tore her eyes away from the haunting sight and lunged at her bedside table. She slapped at the lamp sitting there until it finally came on. She the shuffled toward the side of the bed, knees and hands shaking as the struggled to untangle herself from the bedding wrapped around her.

By the time she freed herself and looked back across the bed toward where she had seen the legs, they were gone. Banished by the light or, possibly, just by her acknowledgement of them.

Rattled, Selina took a heavy seat on the edge of her bed and pressed her hand between her breasts to feel the frantic beat of her heart against her ribs. She had seen many visions in her time, but never anything like that.

* * *

><p>Jason was sleeping better than Selina, at the least. He had eaten his weight in pizza and had put away a good amount of the wine. The combination of the greasy food and vintage wine helped to put him to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.<p>

He was in a deep sleep when he felt someone else crawl into the bed with him. He smiled to himself in his sleep as he felt the mattress dip from the weight of another person.

Jason had invited Tim into his bed before they had all retired to the second floor. He was disappointed to receive a lukewarm reception from the younger man when he invited him to his bedroom. He had been able to cozy up to Tim during the evening in the billiards room. They had talked extensively about Tim, about his classes, his friends and his professors. Jason had steered the conversation away from himself as much as possible. Tim had countered by refusing to talk about his family or his relationship with them very bluntly.

But, Jason had considered the night a success over all. At the end, Tim had seemed more comfortable with him by the end of it. Jason had been hoping to seal the deal with a second roll in the sheets. He had only been a little crushed when Tim refused.

The weight on the other side of the bed shifted and Jason felt a cold hand rub sensually down his spine. Jason shivered slightly. The hand was cold and a little damp.

"D'you just get out of the shower?" Jason mumbled, rolling over to put his nose in a mop of dark wet hair. He laid his hand on the other's shoulder, feeling wetness on the skin there. The smell was not shampoo fresh, either. It smelled more like stagnant pond water. The hair he had pressed his face in was sopping wet, too.

"Jeez, did you towel off at all?" Jason asked, pulling away and waking up a little more.

"Jason," the other person in the bed sighed. And, it wasn't Tim. That wasn't Tim's voice breathing out against Jason's breast bone. The voice was distinctly feminine, breathy and sensual.

Jerking back, Jason looked down at the figure in his bed. He blinked his eyes, trying to will them to focus in the dim light filtering in from outside his window. The figure lying in his bed was, indeed, a woman. One he had seen before.

Olivia Havilland lay in his bed, dripping dirty water onto his bedsheets, her body completely nude and shining in the half light from the window. She looked back at Jason with sly dark eyes, her lips full and pouting as she called his name again.

"Jason," she crooned, as Jason cussed and struggled with the sheets as he tried and failed to jump out of the bed and away from her. "Where are you going? Don't you want to be with me?" she asked, pouting at Jason with a begging expression.

"Fuck you, bitch," Jason spat, finally freeing himself from the bed and falling to the floor on unsteady feet. Jason turned for the door, meaning to make a quick exit, but was stopped by a cry from the dead woman still in his bed.

"I know what you think!" Olivia exclaimed, sitting up in bed, the sheets pooling around her luxuriously wide hips, her full breasts still bare. Jason growled at himself and forced his eyes away from her. "You think that I want you dead. But, nothing could be further from the truth," she purred, leaning forward.

Jason scoffed, crossing his arms and looking up at the ceiling, refusing to make eye contact with the terrifyingly real looking apparition in his bed. "Sure," he replied. "You just want to ride my dick and walk off into the sunset together," he snarked.

"Tch," Olivia clicked her tongue, her face falling into an ugly scowl for a small moment, before she regained her composure and pulled her face back into an offended pout. "We both know that you truly understand what it means to die," she whispered. Her full lips quirked into a small smile to see Jason's posture freeze at her words. "What if I could tell you that you never have too? What if I told you that you could live forever?" she whispered urgently.

It was Jason's turn to click his tongue. "Then, I would tell you that you're a crazy broad. But, I'm guessing you already knew that."

Jason turned his eyes back to Olivia to see her reaction. She regarded him coldly, nothing flirtatious or inviting left in her expression.

"I am not crazy," she hissed. "The Manor can offer you real immortality, if you are only intelligent enough to take it!" she spat, her nose wrinkling and her lip curling at Jason in disgust. "I thought you, of all the foolish people here, might understand what I was offering. I see now I was wrong."

Olivia turned her face away and her smile turned gruesome, a cruel turn of her lip, her eyes dark and glittering black under thick black eyelashes. Slowly, she turned her smile on Jason, the whites of her eyes disappearing behind a dilating set of black iris', her mouth only twisting wider, her teeth growing longer, sharper and dirtier the longer he looked.

Within the space of a breath, Jason turned on his heel and ran out of the room. He slammed his door behind him and heard a heavy weight fall against it with an inhuman roar.

Heart beating frantically and his breaths coming in gasps, Jason ran full tilt down the hall until he reached a door that was slightly ajar. He pushed it open and moved toward the bed by the door.

"Tim!" he called. "Tim, get up," Jason snapped, fumbling at the bedside table until he could turn the light on. Eventually, he was able to get the small lamp to turn on, illuminating the room with a soft golden light.

But, the only thing that Jason saw in that light was a mussed and empty bed. Tim was nowhere to be found.

* * *

><p>Tim slept fitfully after everyone else had gone to bed. He wasn't sure if it was the heavy food he had eaten so late in the evening or the hurt look on Jason's face after he had turned him down. Either way, Tim was regretting not accepting a sleeping pill from Steph before he retired for the night.<p>

Tim was only sleeping by halves when he heard an excited knock at the door.

Blinking sleep out of his eyes, Tim pushed himself out of his bed and to his door. He was surprised to see Jason standing there in a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt, looking excited.

"Jason?" Tim asked, confused and a little apprehensive. He was worried that Jason was going to try and press him further to come to his room.

"Tim, you have to come see this," Jason enthused. He sounded breathless and Tim took notice that there was color high in his cheeks.

Jason reached out and grasped Tim's wrist in his hand and tugged him lightly forward, but Tim held onto the door and didn't budge.

"See what?" Tim asked, still confused and maybe a little sleepy.

"You have to see it to understand it," Jason said hurriedly, tugging a little more urgently. "It explains so much about what's happened here!"

Tim frowned back at Jason. "Shouldn't we wake up Barbara and show her?" he asked.

Jason quickly shook his head, immediately dismissing that idea. "She won't get it," he said dismissively. "Not like you and I do. I know you'll understand it as soon as you see it. You and I think alike," Jason said, flashing Tim a warm and secretive smile.

Tim flushed slightly, his ego swelling despite himself.

"Okay..." Tim said hesitantly.

He let go of his grip on the bedroom door and Jason needed no further encouragement to tug the smaller man behind him down the hall.

Jason led Tim down the carpeted corridor and down the curved open staircase into the cavernous main hall. Once there they then made a sharp u-turn and began walking toward the back of the house and the patio doors that let out into the backyard.

"Can you at least tell me where we're going?" Tim asked, frowning as he noticed that Jason was making a beeline toward the backyard.

Jason smiled over his shoulder at Tim. "Don't you like surprises?" he asked, a slight laugh in his voice.

Tim frowned back at Jason. Jason's mood was starting to seem odd to him. He could understand Jason being excited about finding out some kind of enlightening information about the manor, but his upbeat attitude seemed ill fitting to anything that could explain such a tragic past.

"I guess?" Tim answered hesitantly, his mouth pulling down in a frown at the corners as he stared at the side of Jason's head in consternation.

Jason just laughed in reply, the sound oddly hollow in the cavernous hall, before leading Tim through a patio door that had already been left ajar. Jason lead Tim quickly across the cracked surface of the patio and directly toward the still pond in the middle of the yard. The water in the now still fountain was mostly concealed under a blanket of plants and algae. The still statue of the woman covering her face stood sentry at the far end of the stone pond. He stopped squarely in front of it, the smile wiped completely from his face. Tim stumbled to a stop beside Jason, looking worried back and forth between Jason and the pond.

"Now what?" Tim asked once the silence had drug on too long.

Jason turned to Tim, his face still oddly blank of emotion.

"You have to get in. Look down, straight down, and you'll see it," Jason replied, his voice deep, rumbling out from somewhere deep in his diaphragm.

Tim flushed and hesitated. The thought of climbing into a cold pond in the middle of the night with only a guy he met and slept with yesterday for company didn't exactly put him at ease. But, he couldn't think of any particular reason not to do it (other than that he just plain didn't want too). So, Tim leaned forward and rolled up the bottoms of his pajama pants and slowly stepped into the pond.

The water was freezing cold and Tim hissed a breath through his teeth at the sensation. The bottom of the pond was obviously stone, but slick with algae or some kind of plant growth that squished between his toes. Greenery, lilies and various types of plants bobbed against his shins.

Questioningly, Tim looked back at Jason who continued to regard him blankly. Jason made an impatient gesture with his hand, urging Tim to walk forward.

Sighing, Tim took a cautious step forward and then another, careful to maintain his balance on the slick surface of the stone bottom of the pond. The water around him moved and flexed at his disruption. Tim continued to trudge forward until he was standing roughly in the middle of the pond. He turned to look back at Jason again.

The other man stared at him for a moment before solemnly pointing down at the spot in front of his feet.

Tim frowned, but obediently turned around and looked down in front of him. He didn't see anything, but it was hard to tell if there might be something at the bottom of the pond through all the plants growing on the surface. Tim bent forward at his waist and used his fingertips to try and herd the plants out of the way so that he could look closer at the water in front of him. He even used his foot to brush away the algae growing on the stone bottom of the pond. Still, he couldn't make anything out of the ordinary. Only the plain stone bottom of the pond and reflections of moonlight on the surface of the water.

Frustrated, Tim straightened and looked back over his shoulder for Jason in order to ask him exactly what he was looking for. But, Jason was no longer standing at the edge of the pond. Standing where Jason had been was a woman.

She looked unreal. Her skin was an unnatural white, ghostly and giving off a supernatural light in the dim night. Her hair was long, wavy, black and dripping wet. It hung limply over her face, concealing most of her features. She was dressed in a heavy black dress, an old style of dress with a full skirt and a tightly laced up bodice. Hanging from her neck was a rope fashioned into a huge heavy noose.

Tim stared, transfixed, at the woman for an amount of time until he heard the sound of cracking loudly from behind him.

Feeling panic begin to grow in his chest, Tim turned around to look back in front of him.

Standing directly in front of him was the statue he had seen earlier that day, of the woman shielding her face. The statue looked much the same as it had in the daylight. But, as Tim watched, the arm seemed to move and strain where it clutched at its own face. There was another loud sound and Tim was able to see a crack begin to run down the side of the statue's cheek as its face began to separate from the rest of it.

Tim was pulling in breaths in frantic gasps now, his breathing labored, his head spinning. He spun around again, to check the location of the woman, but she was gone. There was nothing in the tall grass to indicate she or Jason had ever been there.

But, that also meant that Tim's path of escape was now open.

Tim tried to dash forward, back toward the Manor and the relative comfort it may afford him. His footing slipped on the slick bottom of the pond and he fell forward, the cold dark water sloshing over him. Behind him, he could hear more loud cracking sounds, presumably as the statue continued to rend its own face away from itself.

Tim struggled to his feet and was able to push himself over the edge of the fountain and into the tall grass where he could get better traction. He ran forward, his pace frantic, his heart pounding with adrenaline. He ran quickly for the open patio door he and the strange Jason from before had just exited.

He was so blinded by fear that he didn't even see the person standing in the doorway until he was barreling at full force right into that person, bowling them over into the hallway.

Strong arms wrapped around Tim's back and clutched him to a wide muscled chest, even as he struggled to free himself and keep running.

"Tim, Tim!" Jason yelled as he tried to clutch the smaller struggling man to him. "Calm down! Tim, I've got you! You're -"

Jason stopped as something gray went streaking through the air above him and Tim and came clattering to the marble floor. It landed roughly five feet away from them, a face with unseeing eyes staring straight up where it landed.

Jason and Tim both stared at it, one confused the other thrumming with pure terror.

With a small sound, Tim collapsed against Jason, all the fight and energy draining out of him.

Jason clutched Tim closer as he sat up and looked out at the fountain.

"What the hell?" he whispered, mostly to himself.

The status was different, now. It had its arm stretched forward, straight at the patio, and its face was gone. As if it had just thrown it at Tim's retreating back.

"The fuck is wrong with this place?" Jason rasped.

He wouldn't find his answer that night.


	9. Chapter 9: The Morning After

Barbara came downstairs the next morning feeling groggy. She hadn't slept well, her normally restful sleep plagued by strange dreams that she couldn't remember upon waking up.

She had showered and tucked herself into some khaki pants and a sweater, tying her hair back into a messy bun, before heading downstairs to see if she could rustle up some coffee. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and stared at the view she had of the billiard's room.

In a nearby loveseat, Jason and Tim were tangled together under a heap of blankets. There was wrinkled clothes discarded on the floor and Barbara's eyebrows crawled up her forehead as she realized that they were Tim's. The two men were fast asleep. Jason was sprawled inelegantly over the loveseat, his legs and arms hanging limply off the various edges. Tim was curled up on Jason's chest like an overgrown cat, his arms and legs tucked in close to his chest and his cheek resting on Jason's breastbone. Barbara could see his head, a bare shoulder and a naked leg sticking out from under the nest of blankets, but otherwise he was obscured from view.

Barbara rubbed at her eyes wearily. Maybe it wasn't her place to tell them off? No, it was definitely her place to tell them off. She was all for free love and all, but this wasn't her or their house. It was Mr. Wayne's and as the leader of the investigation she had to stick up for his interests in his absence.

Trying to wipe the tired look off of her face and failing, Barbara walked over to the two and gently touched Tim on the shoulder. She had barely brushed the pads of her fingers against his skin before he was sitting bolt upright, staring at her with large frightened eyes.

Barbara quickly swallowed the words she had meant to say and changed direction.

"Tim," she said softly, her hand hovering over his shoulder, not sure if he would welcome her touch. "Are you okay? Why are you two sleeping down here?"

Tim stared blankly at Barbara, his expression haunted and torn. Luckily for him, he wasn't forced to answer her.

"He got attacked by your fucking manor," Jason groused from under Tim.

Jason was slowly blinking his eyes open and cautiously pushing himself into a sitting position. From all the winces and scowls he made as he moved, Barbara imagined that the couch did not treat him well last night. Jason's hair was a mess, stuck to his skull in some places and sticking straight up in others. He was still dressed in his sleep clothes, a loose well worn t-shirt and a pair of sleep pants. They were rumpled, wrinkled and stuck to his chest.

"What do you mean, he got attacked?" Barbara asked, frowning down at Jason. This time, she did press a hand to Tim's head, running her fingers through his hair. It was tangled and felt dirty against her hand, something she wouldn't have expected from Tim.

"Exactly what I said," Jason snapped back at her. "Something pretending to be me lead him out of his room and down to the pond where it attacked him!" Jason shouted, his voice rising with every word.

Tim's shoulders folded in and he gathered the blankets closer against himself. "I'm fine," he said quietly, more for the benefit of himself than anything, Barbara thought.

"Lower your voice!" Barbara demanded, her eyes sharp on Jason. He closed his mouth with an audible click. "Jason, are you sure? Because, if you are, I hope you understand what a big claim that is," Barbara said.

The muscles in Jason's jaw jumped as he fought his own impulse to yell.

"I am absolutely sure," Jason gritted out. "Not only do I absolutely believe Tim, but I absolutely believe my own eyes. I saw that thing attack him myself!" Jason argued.

Barbara closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. This was big news. It was tragic that none of this was caught on tape in anyway. But, the fact that two independent investigators had experienced it was really something. Barbara didn't know whether she should be worried or excited.

Before she could ask for any further details, she heard two pairs of footsteps come down the stairs. Turning around, Babs saw Dick and Damian coming down the stairs together, Dick's head turned curiously in her direction.

"Something up?" he asked, giving Tim and Jay a probing look.

"Tim was attacked by a ghost last night," Barbara said, aware that her voice sounded slightly faint.

"What?" Dick exclaimed. He hurried down the stairs and then over to Tim. Tim huddled deeper into his blanket nest. "Timmy, are you okay?" Dick asked, his hands hovering over Tim's head and shoulders in a more absurd version of what Barbara had just done, wanting to touch and comfort but unsure if it would be allowed.

"I'm fine," Tim repeated petulantly, leaning away from Dick's hands.

"I saw one too," a small voice piped up from near the hall.

All four heads popped up and turned around to look at Damian.

"You saw what?" Barbara asked sharply, frowning at the young Wayne heir.

"I saw a ghost last night. Lucy Wayne," Damian clarified, giving Barbara a look to clearly indicate that he thought she was thick.

"Aw, you too, little Wayne?" a voice called from the top of the stairs. Selina followed her voice down into the hall wearing a long dressing robe, tousled hair and a troubled frown.

"Wait, you saw something too?" Barbara asked, shaking her head in disbelief.

"I think so," Selina sighed, coming to stand behind Damian. "Not Lucy Wayne, though. I believe I encountered her father."

Barbara closed her eyes for another long moment and held her hand up in front of her signaling everyone to just stop. She then took a deep breath, filling her lungs up to their very tip top before letting it all come out through her nose. Afterward, she felt a little bit better. But, only a little bit.

"Okay, I think we should sit down and talk out exactly what happened last night. Why don't you all get changed and get some breakfast," Barbara suggested. "I'll go grab Steph and then we can sort all of this out."

* * *

><p>More than an hour later, the entire contingent were still sitting around the kitchen table frowning down at soggy bowls of cereal and forgotten mugs of lukewarm coffee.<p>

Barbara was slowly working her index and ring fingers into her temples, moving them in slow soothing circles to try and urge a mounting headache away. Dick was giving her a sympathetic look.

"Just to be clear; everyone, with the exception of myself, Dick and Steph, had a supernatural encounter last night?" she asked slowly, enunciating her words carefully.

Dick nodded hesitantly, Selina tipped her head forward with a serious expression, Jason glared somewhere into the middle distance and grunted his affirmative, while Tim nodded glumly, Steph stuttered out shaken 'yes', and Damian silently chomped away at his soggy cornflakes, his silence acting as his acquiescence.

"How do we feel about that?" Dick asked Barbara hesitantly.

Barbara took another deep breath and considered her words carefully before responding. "Normally, I would be ecstatic to have so much activity," she said slowly. Jason made an angry noise which was quickly cut off by a quick chiding sound from Selina. "But," Barbara continued sharply, "what happened with Tim shows that the spirits here are more than capable of doing harm to us. Which drastically changes what needs to happen here."

"Which brings us the biggest question of all," Jason quickly followed. "What do we do now?"

Barbara continued to massage her temples and stare morosely down at the table. "I'm going to call Mr. Wayne, first of all. This happened on his property, after all. If he says to shut down the investigation, then I will," Barbara decided.

"And, what if he doesn't?" Jason shot back.

"Then, we'll discuss it together," Barbara spit back.

Jason opened his mouth to reply, but Dick cut him off. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it!" he said loudly. "Right?" he added, pointing a sharp look toward Jason.

The other psychic settled back in his chair, a surly expression settled on his face.

Hesitantly, Barbara picked up her phone, which had been sitting face down on the table in front of her. She unlocked it, pulled up her contacts and began to scroll through the list of names. She scrolled down until she found Bruce Wayne's name listed among others. She opened his contact and stared at it for a moment, mustering her courage before hitting the call button.

She only had his corporate number and it was early, but she hoped that he might have it set up to forward to another number and that he might still answer. The phone rang and rang and, eventually, his voicemail answered. Barbara closed her eyes in defeat as Bruce's deep rumbling voice greeted her and asked her to leave a message.

At the beat, Barbara spoke into her phone, "Mr. Wayne, it's Barbara. There's been some unusual happenings at Wayne Manor that I'd like to talk to you about. Please return this phone call at your earliest convenience."

"Seriously? Voice mail?" Jason snapped.

Barbara gave him a tired look.

"Okay, boss," Jason continued. "What are we going to do now?"

"We wait for Mr. Wayne to call me back," Barbara responded as evenly and as rationally as she could.

"Oh, sure! Just sit around and wait in the killer house. We can twiddle our thumbs or play patty cake while it thinks up new ways to off us," Jason shot back, his voice thick with sarcasm.

"That's enough!" Dick yelled at Jason.

"No, it's not!" Jason yelled back. "We should get the hell out of here while we still can! This place is dangerous. This isn't normal haunted house bullshit, there is some real freaky shit going on in here. And I, for one, am not going to stick around to see what it does next."

Jason stood, his height making it seem like he was lording himself over the rest of them still seated around the kitchen table.

"Tim?" Jason asked, a thread of vulnerability running through his voice.

Tim had his head down, his elbows braced on the table and his forehead cradled in his hands. "Jason, just -" Tim didn't finish, just sighed and sank further toward the table.

Jason's face contorted in anger and hurt for a single moment, before he turned on his heel and stomped out of the room.

Dick let out an exasperated noise and looked around the table at the others. Everyone avoided his eyes, except for Steph.

"I'll go after him," Steph said quietly. She gave Tim's shoulder a squeeze as she stood up and hurried to follow Jason into the hall.

Dick shifted nervously in his chair and shot a questioningly look at Barbara. He knew that someone needed to take decisive action, but if he did it, Barbara would never gain back control of the group.

Barbara blew a slow breath out between her lips and stood up. "I'll go talk to Jason. Of course, any of you are free to leave after what happened last night," she said clearly, making eye contact with everyone around the table, except for Tim who kept his head down. "If you're all amenable, I'd like to continue with the investigation today and try to get as much done as possible while we still have sunlight. But, once the sun goes down, the investigation will officially cease. I don't want to risk what happened last night happening again."

Hesitantly, Tim's head came up and he looked at Barbara. There were dark marks under his eyes and his face was more pale than usual. She gave him an apologetic smile. He quickly looked away.

Nodding firmly, Barbara stepped around the breakfast table and made her way out into the hall after Steph and Jason. She heard rattling and raised voices as she made her way toward the front door. She braced herself to break up a fight.

As Barbara came around the corner and out into the main hall, she noticed that both Steph and Jason were fighting, but not with each other. They were both struggling desperately with the door.

"At the danger of repeating myself, what are you two doing?" Barbara asked hesitantly, as she approached the two.

They both turned to look at her, Jason to give her a murderous look. Steph's expression was confused and panicked.

"The doors won't open," Steph responded a little breathlessly.

Barbara frowned at her, the skin between her eyebrows puckering slightly.

"What do you mean, they won't open?" she asked, walking toward the door. She placed her hand on the handle. Despite both Jason and Steph clutching the handle a few seconds earlier, the metal felt cold and dead in her hand. Barbara squeezed down on the latch and pulled backward. The latch didn't move and neither did the door.

Frowning deeper, Barbara pressed her other hand down on the top of the latch, but still it didn't depress. She gave it a few good yanks, but it didn't budge.

"Gee, did you maybe misplace the key?" Jason sneered, suspicion clear on his face.

"I didn't lock the door, Jason," Barbara snapped. She sighed and looked back at the doors. "They're old doors and it got a little cold last night. Maybe they're just stuck."

"That's a good idea!" Steph piped up. She looked worried, but optimistic. "Are there other exits we can try?" she asked.

"Most of them are around the back," Barbara answered unhappily. "And the woods around the Manor have really moved in close on all sides. I wouldn't recommend trying to go around. Let's try a window," Barbara sighed.

She walked out of the main hall and into a nearby front parlor. The furniture there was still covered in white drop cloths to protect them from dust. Barbara moved to a nearby window and worked the lock at the top of it free. She then placed her fingertips in the small handholds placed along the bottom edge of the window and lifted with all of her strength. The window didn't so much as groan or tremble in its frame.

"Did you unlock it?" Jason asked incredulously from somewhere behind her as she strained and strained and got nowhere.

"Yes, I unlocked it," Barbara huffed as she let go of the window and stood back. She ran a hand through her hair and frowned when it remained tied in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. With a grunt of frustration, she snapped the the rubber band out of her hair and let it fall free.

"Why don't you try it? You're stronger than me," Barbara offered with a raised eyebrow.

Jason took her up on her offer, striding toward the window with confidence. He made a point of looking at the lock, but it was obviously undone. Jason positioned himself the same as Babs had and lifted. His muscles flexed, his arms and shoulders swelling with the effort. He gritted his teeth and grunted as he tried to lift it, but it wouldn't move.

"Shit!" Jason gasped as he finally let go of the window and stumbled back. "Are they fucking nailed shut or something?" he asked, moving back toward the window. He pressed his forehead to the glass and looked down at the bottom of the frame to see if he could see the heads of any nails holding the window in place.

"Can we try the back doors?" Steph asked tremulously, looking slightly unnerved. "They worked last night, right? Since Tim went outside?"

"Sure," Barbara agreed, taking Steph by the hand and giving her a slight squeeze. "Let's try the back," she said to Jason.

Together, the three of them moved back into the hall and toward the back of the house. Dick noticed them as they walked by the kitchen entrance and followed them out into the hall, Selina trailing behind him.

"What's up?" Dick asked. "Are you not leaving, now?" he directed at Jason.

"I would leave if I fucking could," Jason snapped at Dick.

"The front door is stuck," Barbara said abruptly, cutting the two men off before they could get into it again. "We're going to try the back doors to see if Jason can get out through there."

"Stuck?" Dick repeated, his voice disbelieving.

"Trust me, we tried them. They're not moving for anyone on this side of the veil," Jason replied.

Barbara reached the patio doors. There were lined against the wall, white french doors with glass frames set in each. She moved toward the closest one and tried the door. The doorknob didn't rotate. She tried to jimmy it open, but it didn't even shake in its frame.

Stepping back, Barbara stared at the door, mistified.

"Let me try," Dick said confidently. He stepped forward and went through much the same process as Barbara. He tried the doorknob, then tried to just shake the door loose to no avail. "Wow, that is really stuck," Dick breathed after finally giving up and stepping back from the door.

"Fuck this," Jason snapped, moving around everyone else. He picked up a wooden chair from a nearby wall and stomped meaningfully toward the door.

"Jason!" Barbara screeched. A chorus of yells and talking erupted around Jason as he moved toward the door, but he didn't take any notice.

He heaved the chair above his head, where it hung in his hands for a brief moment, before he swung it down against the glass with all of his strength. The chair shattered, the legs flying off it and clattering loudly to the floor.

The paint didn't even chip off the door, nor was there a scratch left behind.

"Okay," Jason gasped, his chest heaving in a mixture of physical exertion and honest fear. "That is fucked up."

"The solarium!" Steph yelped. Her face was drained of color and she looked slightly sick with nervousness and fear. "It leads outside! We should try that door next," she suggested.

Barbara nodded in agreement and lead everyone back to the kitchen. She stopped abruptly in the doorway to the kitchen and looked around.

"What are you guys doing?" Tim asked tiredly.

He sat alone at the table. Barbara looked quickly behind her toward the stairs. She looked around Tim and into the kitchen near the counters. She ignored Tim as he asked her again what she was doing. She looked in the pantry, but it was also empty. Finally, she gave the door to the solarium a cursory attempt. It opened easily in her hand.

Barbara impatiently turned back to Tim.

"Where's Damian?" she asked.

Tim frowned back at her. "He left to go see what you guys were doing," Tim replied, seeming confused.

"Damian's not with us," Steph interjected, filling in last behind the others. She saw that the solarium door was open and whooped in joy before running past Barbara and out into the solarium.

"He didn't say anything to me when he left. Maybe he went back to his room or to the bathroom?" Tim suggested.

Steph came running back just as Dick, Jason and Selina were exchanging confused looks. "I can't get out of solarium," she gasped, out of breath from running back and forth so quickly. "We're really trapped, guys."

"What are you talking about?" Tim asked Steph.

Steph gave Tim a look that said 'How can you even ask me that?'

"Dick, Damian is missing," Barbara said quickly, cutting across Tim and Steph's conversation.

"What?" Dick asked. He cast around the kitchen, looking for Damian himself. He opened his mouth to ask the same questions Barbara had asked, but she cut him off before he could.

"Dick, can you find him?" she asked, pinning him with a look.

He closed his mouth with a click and looked back at her with a confused expression before recognition lit up his face.

"Oh!" he exclaimed "Oh, yeah. Sure."

Dick closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He centered himself and let his awareness float out. The manor's surface roiled around him, a confusion of chaos and malignance. Dick pushed it away and focused on the familiar feel of the Wayne heir, his surly countenance and his determined aura. Finally, he found him, deep under the Manor, surrounded by darkness.

Dick's eyes snapped open, wide and afraid. "Guys, we have to find him," he gasped out.

* * *

><p>Damian left the kitchen shortly after Dick and Selina departed to follow Barbara, Jason and Steph. But, his aim was not to follow them. He intended to explore as much of the manor as he could in whatever time he had left.<p>

The young Wayne heir wasn't sure if he would get another chance to walk around the manor unaccompanied, especially considering all the events of the previous night and the effect they were having on the group of investigators. He thought it best not to take his chances and to instead take the initiative into his own hands and investigate.

He decided that he would climb upward first and then work his way down. To this end, Damian climbed the stairs up to the second floor. He continued down the hall toward the back of the manor until he found the set of circling servant stairs that ran from the bottom to the top of the manor. He started to climb.

Gaining a chance not only to enter and explore Wayne Manor had been Damian's true objective in joining Barbara's investigation that his father had been trying unsuccessfully to suss out. The young Wayne heir wasn't about to let that opportunity, possibly the last, slip out from between his fingers.

Damian had been plagued by dreams since he was a young child of Wayne Manor. It was the same dream every time, rarely varying to any degree. He didn't understand why he kept dreaming the same dream over and over, but he knew that the answer had to be somewhere in his ancestral family home.

The stairway that Damian was in was without windows, the hallway lit by electric lights in wall sconces set regularly along the stairs and landings. The stairs were utilitarian in terms of the normal decorating style of Wayne Manor. The railing was relatively tame and made of medium colored wood polished to a shine. The floor was also wood, but with a deep red carpet runner along the middle of the walkway. The walls were paneled wood on the bottom half and wallpapered with a vertical striped pattern of alternating pale and dark red on the top.

Damian climbed one flight of stairs, then two, then three, then he stopped. At the third landing, the stairs continued upward. Even though that was impossible. There were only three floors in Wayne Manor.

Hesitantly, Damian decided to keep climbing. He continued up to a fourth landing, then a fifth and a sixth.

At the tenth floor, Damian stopped and stared at the door exiting into the hallway. The stairs continued upward as far as he could see. He was slightly out of breath and attributed it to climbing all of those stairs. He didn't want to consider that the strange staircase might be bothering him.

He knew that Wayne Manor was haunted. He knew that before he had even heard of his father's planned investigation. He was determined not to let it scare him.

Damian pushed open the door leading off the landing and onto whatever floor he was on. He opened the door onto a thick pervasive darkness. The only light on that floor came from the staircase behind him and an old glass and oil lantern sitting on a rickety wooden chair to the right of the open doorway.

Damian reached over and plucked the nearby lantern up and held it up in front of him. The new height of the lantern illuminated rough hewn walls around him, made of stone and braced with old wooden frames intermittently. The floor was covered in a fine gray gravel.

The lantern only illuminated the underground hallway a few feet in front of him. Whatever Damian was getting himself into, he wouldn't have much of a chance to prepare himself for whatever was coming. But, Damian was determined to keep pushing on. He took a deep breath and began to advance down the cave-like hallway.

The hallway remained much the same for some fifty feet or so. After that, it started to become rougher and to slope steeply downward. The wooden frames holding up the walls were more infrequent the further that Damian went and the walls were more irregular, sloping in on the left or right.

After walking for ten or fifteen minutes, Damian eventually reached a part of the cave where it opened up onto an underground lake. He could hear rushing water from somewhere nearby. He held his lantern low to the ground and it shone on shining clear water as it lapped quietly at the rocky cave shore.

The young Wayne heir suppressed a shiver. The cave and the lake it terminated at were familiar to him. He saw them most nights in his dreams. He knew he was getting close to his answer.

Damian turned right and began to follow the edge of the water around the edge of the lake. At some points the wall of the cave became very low, but he was able to keep out of the water for the most part.

He estimated that he had traveled maybe 100 feet when he heard something moving in the water to his left.

Damian froze and held his lantern high above his head, the warm yellow light of the flame casting out and reflecting on the surface of the lake. From directly in front of him and out in the water, ripples radiated out toward him. The water lapped gently at the tips of this sneakers.

"Damian," a raspy feminine voice whispered.

A cold finger ran down his spine at the sound, the voice scratching a rarely reached corner of his mind. A memory stirred in the deep recesses of his mind, but he was unable to shake it loose.

"Who's there?" Damian called, his voice weaker than he intended.

"Help me," the voice responded. It sounded closer, now. Indeed, the ripples moving toward him across the water seemed stronger now, their origin moving closer to him.

Damian breathed harshly through his nose and pressed back further from the water. The cold stone wall pressed mercilessly against his shoulders. His hand was shaking slightly where it held the lantern high above his head, the flame dancing slightly with the movement.

"Damian, please help me," the voice pleaded, moving closer. Emotion was thick in the voice that called to him, tears audible in the words.

As he watched, a female form began to approach the edge of his lantern light. He could only see the edges of her form. The soft curve of feminine shoulders, dark hair tumbling over them, a sharp contrast on her pale skin. It looked like she was wearing a cincher or corset, something that held her waist small and tight.

Damian's heart was pounding in his chest in a way he was unfamiliar with. He hadn't felt this fear when he had been approached by the apparition of Lucy Wayne. In fact, he couldn't recall feeling this kind of fear ever before in his short life.

But, that didn't feel right, either. This whole scene was eerily familiar. As if he had dreamed it before. But, this wasn't part of his normal dream. At least, not that he could remember.

The woman moved closer. Long white arms lifted up, hands held palms up in supplication. Her pale skin almost glowed in the lantern light.

"Damian, won't you help me?" the woman asked as she stepped further into the circle of light.

Objectively, Damian thought she must have been beautiful at one time. She still was, in a way. Her skin was pale, her hair so very very dark. It was long and parted in the middle of her head to tumble in soft waves over her shoulder. She had high well defined cheekbones and a small straight nose. Her brows were dark and nobly arched over dark eyes with long curled black eyelashes. Her lips were a dusky red, thick and bowed.

But, she was very obviously dead.

Her long white neck was ringed by a dark red and purple bruise, blood vessels bursted in extravagant fashion beneath the surface of her skin. Her dark eyes were too dark, no differentiation between iris and pupil and they were dilated, the whites of her eyes just small marks to the left and rights. Her lips were chapped, black slowly seeping from the seam of her mouth and toward the edge of her lips. When she spoke, her straight white teeth were blackened in the spaces between them and her gums black and leaking, her tongue a lolling black muscle in her mouth.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Damian knew he was in a huge amount of danger. The answer to his dreams may be standing right in front of him. But, even if he stayed and determined the truth, he may not live to enjoy that knowledge.

After a brief hesitation, Damian dashed to his left away from the woman, his feet splashing in the water as he carelessly charged along the shore.

Her rasping laugh followed behind him, echoed around him and seemed to follow and mock him as he ran as quickly as he could back to the path that would lead him back to the staircase. Damian ran frantically and didn't make much of a point of keeping track of how far he was running. At some point he realized he had run entirely too far and must have missed the entrance to the hall which would lead him back to the staircase.

Panting, Damian turned around and held the lantern out behind him. The woman was just feet behind him, her dark mouth twisted into an ugly smile, her teeth shining in the lantern light.

Sucking in a desperate breath, Damian turned around and kept running. He couldn't possibly turn back around with her following him. He could only continue to push forward and hope he found an exit to the cave before the shore disappeared or he ran out of energy and she caught him.

Damian kept running and the shore became smaller and smaller. Soon, his sneakers were soaked through and he crashed through the water onward. He could feel panic slowly encroaching on him. If he had to swim, he had little confidence that he could evade the creature behind him.

Water was lapping at Damian's knees by the time he finally came upon a set of slick and dangerous steps carved into the side of the cave wall.

Damian scrambled up onto them, climbing with both his hands and his feet to help keep himself steady on the dangerously steep and slick steps. Behind him, he could hear the woman calling his name, begging and crying for him to come back. Damian blocked the words out to the best of his ability and continued to frantically climb.

Eventually, he reached a rock outcropping that seemed to jut out over the lake below. Damian ran along it where it butted up against the wall of the cave until he came to a metal door set into the rock wall. He grabbed the handle and yanked with all his strength. The metal door groaned and screeched, but only moved slightly.

Damian heard the creature laugh from somewhere behind him. The sound echoed, making it hard to pinpoint exactly where it was coming from.

The young boy set the sole of his shoe against the wall beside the door and pulled hard, the muscles in his arms and back screaming in protest at the rough treatment even as the adrenaline pumping through his body kept him numb to anything but screaming terror. The door continued to protest, moaning and grumbling as the rusted metal scraped against itself. But, finally, with a sudden pop the door came open and Damian fell backward. He only stopped himself from clocking himself on the back of the head by clinging desperately to the door handle.

All around him, the mocking laugh turned into an enraged scream.

Damian quickly threw himself through the doorway and yanked the metal door shut behind him. It didn't shut behind him fully, the door still too rusted and warped to shut completely.

He didn't waste any time trying to secure the door and threw himself forward again. Damian ran full tilt through the small cave he found himself in. This one was very similar to the one he had been in before, a small cave propped up by the occasional wooden frame moving at a gradual incline. At some point, Damian turned a corner and the cave turned into a stone and mortar hallway and then a set of man made stairs.

Damian didn't pause, just kept pushing forward. His legs pumped frantically behind him. He could hear something moving behind him, like a snake slithering on the loose gravel floor and then over flagstones when the floor changed. Damian's breath was coming harshly, his lungs burning and his body beginning to feel exhaustion set in as the adrenaline wore off.

The stairs began to spiral as he followed them up. Damian stumbled a few times, but was able to stay upright by holding onto the walls around him. At the top of the spiral staircase was a ladder that lead to a trap door. Damian climbed frantically up the ladder and, once he was at the top, drove the flat of his hand against the underside of the door. He breathed out a sigh of relief when the door flew up and open.

Damian quickly pushed himself up and out of the trap door and rushed forward without bothering to take in his surroundings or to try and close the trap door behind him.

As Damian shot forward, his wet sneakers slipped on the tile floor beneath him. He gasped and threw his hands out in front of him to try and catch his fall, but wasn't able to stop his head from smacking against the edge of the kitchen counter with a sickening crack.

His vision went black before he hit the floor.


End file.
